The advantage of any decent drum kit mic set is that not only do you get a complete kit that’s right for the job, but they most often mount directly onto the hardware which makes for easy setup. The C518s from the kit were used on the toms, with an SM57 on the snare (top), pointed at the batter pattern and the Opus 58s as a coincident XY pair about 1m above the cymbals and centred over the bass drum. The hi-hat had an SM58 about 4-5” from the bell. We didn’t use the D112 kick mic at all – our drummer Drew had an Audio Technica Pro 44 boundary mic and on a whim I shoved it into the bass drum inside some of the damping cushions. We never went back to try another mic after that, it was that good a sound!
We tried a couple of other techniques too – one was putting a mic on the bottom skin of the snare. Now I know some people swear by this approach but I have never heard it yield anything that I would want to use – you just get a load of rattle and an equal amount of dreadful off-axis spill from the bass drum and first rack tom. A mic on the front skin of the kick was similarly unimpressive although if you’re struggling to get the “click” its worth trying. A condenser on the hat proved far too sensitive to spill. For jazz drumming, where there’s a lot of hi fidelity needed itsd probably a good choice but for heavy rock with a drummer bashing seven bells out of the hat, an SM57 works marvelously!
For the most part 2 mics were used on the guitar cabs; an SM57 or a Sennheiser e906 and an AKG C414, both on axis and close up to the speaker, a couple of inches off centre. The great thing about this technique is that you can get a huge range of sounds just by adjusting the blend between the 2 mics without ever touching an EQ! The Sennheiser gives quite a fat, slightly scooped guitar sound while the SM57 has more presence. The c414 has a much wider frequency response that really captures the excessive highs and lows as well as more ambience if moved back from the speaker. Some of the guitar parts, especially solos and clean parts were tracked using the battered old POD again. Those things really are life savers!