John Bonham

Used for the bass drum on "When the Levee Breaks", as mentioned by sound engineer George Chkiantz in this excerpt from Anatomy of a Song: The Oral History of 45 Iconic Hits That Changed Rock, R&B, and Pop.

There were two studios at Olympic – one large and one small. Management had installed our sixteen-track recorder in the small one with hopes of luring rock bands in there and away from the larger sixty-by-forty-foot space with twenty-eight-foot ceilings, where we recorded mostly classical works and film scores. But Jimmy chose the larger one – even though it had only an eight-track recorder. He wanted the extra space so the drums could be miked properly for stereo.

I was a relative novice then, and what Jimmy wanted was a stretch, given Olympic’s traditional way of miking drums. So I invented a new way. I didn’t mike the snare, since that would have reduced the size and space of the drum sound. Instead, I used a stereo mike on an eight-foot boom above the drums, along with two distant side mikes to give the tom-toms edge, and a huge AKG D30 mike positioned about two feet from the bass drum. Jimmy knew that high-end mikes didn’t have to be up against an instrument to maximize the sound.

Used for "When the Levee Breaks", as mentioned by sound engineer Andy Johns in this MusicRadar interview published October 31, 2013.

"I used two Beyerdynamic M160 microphones and I put a couple of limiters over the two mics and used a Binson Echorec echo device that Jimmy Page had bought. They were Italian-made and instead of tape they used a very thin steel drum.

"Tape would wear out and you'd have to keep replacing it. But this wafer-thin drum worked on the same principle as a wire recorder. It was magnetised and had various heads on it and there were different settings. They were very cool things!

"And so playing at that particular tempo on 'Levee the limiters had time to breathe and that's how Bonzo got that 'Ga Gack' sound because of the Binson. He wasn't playing that. It was the Binson that made him sound like that. I remember playing it back in the Stones' mobile truck and thinking, 'Bonzo's gotta f**king like this!' I had never heard anything like it and the drum sound was quite spectacular."

Featured in this page from the fansite JohnBonham.co.uk.

According to Jeff Ocheltree (Bonham's drum tech in 1977 & 1979), the Showco concert-sound company used Shure Professional Series SM57 microphones to mic up everything from the timpani, to the bass drum (one mic at the front side, and another placed near the beater on the back). The Vistalite and stainless steel drum kits were also miked-up using this mic.

Many more details can be found in Welch & Nicholls' amazing book - 'John Bonham: A Thunder Of Drums' Which you really ought to own!

Used for the bass drum on "D'yer Maker", as stated in Led Zeppelin All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track by Philippe Margotin & Jean-Michel Guesdon.

"D'yer Maker" open with an excellent drum fill by John Bonham. The sound is heavy (suggesting the tape has been slowed down slightly) and live, masterfully recorded by Eddie Kramer in the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio. Three mics were apparently sufficient to capture the incredible sound: two Neumann U87s above the Ludwig and an AKG D12 in front of the bass drum.