Most drum kit microphone setups consist of 2 mics on the kick drum, an outer microphone and an inner microphone inside the kick drum to pick up the attack of the beater. However, if you're wanting to pick up lower frequencies and make the kick sound more substantial within a mix one way is by using a sub kick to pickup the lower frequencies which normal mics cannot.
The Sub kick microphone consists of an old speaker driver, some resistors and some mic cable, with an XLR or jack (depending on how you want to connect it) soldered to the end. This is a great way of recycling something that would have most likely been thrown away and you get to create another mic to add to your arsenal.
How Does it work ?
Both dynamic mics and speaker drivers are transducers so when the polarity is swapped round on the speaker, instead of it acting as an output it acts as an input.
Parts needed
For this project you will need:
A speaker driver - Preferably no more than 6.5inches.
Resistors - You can build this without the resistors if you have a decent pad to bring the signal down (as its quite hot). For this I bought a selection ranging from 100 ohms to 100k ohms, you may find you need more than one. (Look at the section at the bottom for adding a pad.)
Some mic cable. (Balanced)
A soldering Iron and solder, or crimps (soldering is the best approach as it provides the best connection.)
A male XLR plug.
Something to mount the speaker driver onto (I used an old snare drum stand.) This isn't essential but can be helpful.
Reducing the output of the Subkick (pad)
To make the signal less hot, add some inline resistors in series (one after another) and connect one resistor across the positive and negative connections of the speaker as shown below. For this particular Subkick i used two 2 kohm resistors in series to the positive speaker terminal, and a single 100 ohm resistor across both terminals (crimps were used for testing purposes.)
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