Jon Theodore

Used as overheads on Villains, as stated by co-producer and engineer Mark Rankin in this October 26, 2017 AudioTechnology interview.

He’d have some standard overheads set up, but most of the times it was just the mono overhead with some room mics added for size. He put up a couple of Neumann M50 tube condensers to capture the great room sound at United, but most of the time that ambience was too big. “Sometimes I had a couple of condenser mics low to the floor, just outside the kit and facing out to get that close slap. Or if we had panels around them I’d have them facing out towards the panels to get quite a close ambient sound.”

Used as a close overhead on Villains, as stated by co-producer and engineer Mark Rankin in this October 26, 2017 AudioTechnology interview.

Beyond the sound of contact mics, Rankin used an old RCA ribbon mic just over the drummer’s shoulder. “It’s as if someone is sitting with their chin on your shoulder while you play,” said Rankin about the mic placement. “It looks down toward the snare and the kick. Sometimes if there’s too much hi-hat I’ll move it over to the other side so there’s a bit more distance. With a bit of compression and a bit of drive, it’s a great hard 800Hz-area breakbeat sound. It gives you the character. We would start somewhere between that and the contact mics, then add things to fill the picture out.”

(...) They also used a lot of distortion to shape the sounds. “I’m a big fan of distortion on the way in, it makes things come alive,” explained Rankin. “It adds a bit of aggression and pulls the harmonics out of it. Sometimes it means you can push the ambience lower but still get the feeling. The sound becomes a bit more hammered and the harmonics seem to spread it out a bit. It means the drums don’t have to be so banging, but they feel like they are.

“I used a lot of distortion from a great company in LA called Overstayer. We heavily used the Saturator. I usually put that on ambient and room mics to drive those a bit. Overstayer’s VCA compressor also has harmonics you can blend in. I used the JHS Colour Box pedal on the RCA mic. It has two stages so you can drive it into itself. And the Standard Audio Level-or is insanely good. Sometimes we’d also drive the board.