Bill Berry

Used for the drums on Reckoning, as recalled by producers Mitch Easter and Don Dixon in this February 1, 2009 Mix Online interview.

Easter says that drum miking on Reckoning was fairly conventional, with the exception of Dixon’s homemade version of Fritz, the binaural dummy head: “We wanted that stereo sound, but we didn’t have the budget for a real one,” Easter says. “But Dixon figured you could make one out of a cardboard box. He would take these 2-inch tape-shipping boxes that held two reels, and it was perfect to cut a slot in it and shove in one of those stereo brackets that holds two mics. He would ram that through the box and draw a nice face on the head.”

“I’d been doing that for a number of years,” Dixon confirms. “We’d use U64s or maybe small-diaphragm AKGs — whatever was handy that had a small diaphragm. We would try to pack it with something so it would be solid. I still do that today. Those tape boxes are scattered all over the world!”

Used for the bass drum on Murmur, as recalled by producer Mitch Easter in this November 2009 Sound on Sound interview.

This time around, while Bill Berry's drum kit was conventionally miked in the booth — "I'm sure we had an [ElectroVoice] RE20 on the bass drum, because that's what you did in the United States at that time” — Mike Mills played his Rickenbacker bass through the studio's Ampeg B15 amp which was recorded with a distant mic in a small corridor.