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Sub-kick mic project

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One of the major drum companies offers a "sub-kick" product that is designed to capture the extreme low end thump of a kick drum.  It's packaged in a fancy drum shell and has a fancy stand and a fancy price tag too (over $250).  Luckily, you can make one really cheap.  All you need is a woofer-- 6-8" works great--some wire, an XLR jack and something to prop it up.

First, I bought an 8" foam-surround woofer on eBay for about $10.   Next, I wired an XLR(M) jack to the speaker.   I wired (+) to pin 2 and (-) to pin 1.  I used some old scraps to make a bracket, and used some old rubber plumbing washers as gaskets (to isolate it a bit from the mount).  I used a PVC T fitting to connect the bracket to the mic stand.  Then I cut down a cheap MF mic stand and mounted it.  It is actually plenty stable, and fits right up next to my kick drum.

The cost of mine was probably under $40 although I didn't actually keep track and many of the parts were just laying around anyway.

Update1:  It sounds really great but the signal was REALLY hot, so I built an attenuator pad into the XLR jack.  I created a simple "L pad" by placing a 10K ohm resistor in series with pin2 and a 1K ohm resistor (shunt) across pin's 1 & 2 (I didn't get very scientific with the resistor sizing, so this probably is not the optimal impedance matching - but hey, it works!).  This drops the signal around ~20dB and helps so it doesn't overdrive my preamp.

I usually use it with an Audix D6 inside the kick.

Update2:  I got an old 10" drum shell ($10), stripped the hardware off and mounted the speaker (mic) in it.  This can prevent the sound from reaching the back of the speaker and causing phase issues (or cancelling some frequencies).  I stuffed some foam in the back to reduce the potential of any "ringing" inside the shell.

Update3:  I received some requests for some sound samples of the subkick.  These are excerpts from some recordings I have done recently.  If you have good speakers or headphones it should be obvious that the "A" sample is with the subkick.

Subkick1A  Subkick1B  Subkick2A  Subkick2B

other DIY projects:

PM-1000 Project

Bass Traps Project

Last updated 08/02/2008