Musician Gear & Tech Discussion

So I practiced with drummer the other day in my place, the room is decent size, 14' by 25' maybe? I have an SM-58 mic and an acoustic guitar hooked to a 180w berringer amp which is technically a keyboard amp, but when the drums started going we couldn't hear the guitar or even the vocals sometimes, should the drummer play softer or should I invest in a better amp? Any other tips on things I should buy or change the room set up? Not rich on the budget but not struggling either. Drums were against the wall.

Going to try to post the rehearsal area pic:

In a room like that with the wood floors and all the drums are going to be very loud, a simple thing is too dampen then with towels or pillows, but your drummer aint gonna like it.

Another suggestion would be to get a couple of chairs and put the back to the drums and just throw a big blanket over them to kill the drums some, this might work better with your drummer.

This is an age old problem of playing in groups, volume wars.

I think whatever is going on the vocals need to be on top of everything else volume wise, sadly its not easy to adjust a drummer.

Good Luck

An agressive live acousic drummer can be tough to rehearse with. They make a headphone system where you run everything through your mixer and rehearse with ear buds or headphones. I would recommend installing a sound supression wall around your drummer. You have probably seen them made of plexi-glass or acrylic when watching a video of a symphony that uses a drummer. You can make one for not a lot of $ if you or your mates are handy!

The Behringer ACX1800 lists itself as 180 watts - I happened to be looking at that one the other day because GC has one used for $99 (I think).
Funny thing is I can't find any *real* specs for that amp - even on Behr's site. 180 watts into two 8" speakers doesn't add up for a $200 amp. I suspect this amp is probably about 50-60 watts RMS, at most.

As has already been said, drummers in big empty untreated rooms can be loud. We have a plexi shield around our drummer for rehearsals. I use a Spider 75 watt amp for guitars - it's just loud enough for practice, but for gigs it will be mic-ed into the PA.

A pillow stuffed into the bass drum will help with its volume a little, but if the drummer has no sense of dynamics and plays everything at full strength, it's tough to control.

Cool thanks a lot guys, yeah general consensus seems to be to tell the drums to lighten up a bit, I thought the amp sounded a little to soft for 180w as well, plus it's not very big, not that that's always the case. But anyway, thanks very much!

Joe if you are using that amp for vocals and such, then you might want to get something to set if up a little higher more in ear range.

It's very hard for the drummer to lighten up. Once the song starts, and gets to the loud chorus parts, they're right back to normal volume. Everyone has to come up over the drums, and then all of you are loud.

At our rehearsal, the drummer plays on a small kit that stays. Everyone can be heard, but I do wear ear plugs.

In-ear monitors, once you have a real PA system, will preserve your hearing AND let you hear everything!

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday. If your drummer can get a used set of electronic drums. you can amplify them and turn them to mix with the volume of the rest of the band. The only problem is most drummers don't like the way those rubber drum heads react with their sticks. Another thing we used to do is the drummer would bring his practice pads and we turned down to match. An acoustic guitar un-amplyfied can keep up no problem. Rehearsing this way you don't even need a p.a.

Some of the options I have mentioned take discipline. Having said that discipline is what music is all about!

I really don't care for hammer handed drummers at all.

Steve-O is a big fellow yet his 12 year old son hits the skins harder.

Most of the heavy hitters I have heard were inexperienced or lacked any kind of finesse.

A kit, like a guitar will give a thousand nuance depending on your attack.

You don't have to be painfully loud to be good. And in the environment displayed in the photo, as alluded to by others, is just begging to be dampened.

Even at appreciably lower volumes you will have low & mid frequency sound bouncing like balls on a pool table.

Invest in some cheap throw rugs.

Hard wood floors
Big empty room
everything in that room will bounce all over.

I dont see a Sound system in there,at least vocals require a PA.
You can have an experienced drummer with the capability to play light but the room acoustics hard wood floors the sound is still going to reverberate like your in a huge bathroom.

A huge area rug or carpet remnant on the floor might help.
the hard wood floor is your worst enemy.

The idea of a few chairs and a blanket fortress around the drums is a good idea if anything.

Hang blankets on the walls all the way around. Carpet would help on the floor too, or at least a large rug. Drummers can play quieter, it's not easy, but I've played with several who could do it well.

For practice, you don't need a huge drum set, for low noise, he might want to try a set of different sized hardcover books. When I was in high school we had a kid who couldn't afford practice pads. Band director recommended a large hard cover book, he said it would work great. Within 2 weeks ever drummer in the band was using them, they liked books better than actual practice pads.

That makes a bass drum kind of difficult, but maybe a wooden crate? I dunno...never did figure out anything for a bass drum...

For the guitar they make clip in pickups for non-electric acoustics.

The 180 watt rating of the amp is probably the power draw at the power transformer. Most amps have that listed somewhere too. 180 at the power transformer would make it somewhere in the 30-40 output wattage range. My Peavey MX, at 130 watts output, has a 400 watt input power rating. I can't remember what the Super Reverb is.

If you ran preamp stages for both the mic and guitar before entering the Beringer at its line level ins, I think you may have better luck establishing a presence relative to the drums.

EQ-ing can help tremendously as well. Boosting Mids can be really effective in allowing vocals or guitar stand out in a mix. I would have each set for high mids, but dont give them each the exact same EQ setiing. Try maxing different mid-range frequencies for the mic than the ones set for guitar.