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[soundz915]

I am looking at a Yamaha subkick for my studio. Not having used this pc. I am wordering what you guys think.

Regards Scott Pike

[john p]

awesome....just like a 47 fet for a quarter of the price. get one.

[Ross Hogarth]

i love it !

[David Satz]

At first I had no idea what this thread was about; now I realize. Not wanting to be a wet blanket, but I hope you all realize that it's total self-serving pseudo-technical bulls--t when for example the Web page for this product says, "We took a 6.5" speaker and shock-mounted it into a 10" drum shell and reverse-wired it to an XLR jack to convert the speaker diaphragm into a microphone diaphragm. This allows Subkick to pick up the low-end that a normal microphone can't."

I mean, it's always fun and an instructive prank/science experiment to try using speaker elements as microphones. The results can be surprisingly good sometimes, considering the randomness of it all; in a pinch some dynamic headphone elements can even be used for recording. But the central premise of the SKRM-100's marketing statement is simply wrong, since the size of a microphone has nothing in particular to do with its ability to pick up low frequencies. There are measurement microphones 1/8" across that have ruler flat response down to 1 Hz, for example, while many revered "vintage" large-diaphragm microphones have nothing much but stand rumble and wind noise below 30.

Size matters greatly in a woofer because it has to transfer power and move large volumes of air; if a woofer didn't have a large cone it would have to "excurt" an impossibly long distance to pump audible amounts of low-frequency sound energy into a room. But microphone diaphragms simply respond to vibrations with very slight movements of their own. They're like the sails of a boat; they don't have to provide the wind! And the more you weigh down the moving system of a microphone, the more you screw up its transient response. So I would think that particularly for a drum microphone where the character of the transients is so much of what matters, you really, really wouldn't want a microphone with this approach or anything remotely like it.

[zebra50]

I'd go along with the above opinion that it is marketing BS.

However, I'd also say that I frequently use some kind of 'speaker-mic' for recording kick drum, bass and even synths, and that it is a useful effect in conjunction with a second 'proper' microphone to pick up the transients. Usually i use a 5 incher from an old monitor, or else just a guitar cab.

The idea is certainly worth some experimentation, but I wouldn't spend actual real money on something like that when you can do it yourself for next to nothing.

Stewart Tavener

[MorningStar]

The only part that is marketing bs is that Yamaha acts like this guy invented this thing. It works great! Its not meant to be used as the sole mic on the kick drum. It misses all of the transients so another mic is needed for the attack. It only costs around 250, comes with a nice stand that positions it very nicely. While it may be cheaper to build one yourself, this is a well built, self contained unit that is easily moved into position, etc.
and again it sounds great. The sub kick and a SM91(ala Michael Wagener) is a great kick drum sound, and its so easy to get a great sound with it. anyway YMMV