recordinghacks

Yamaha Subkick

Bidirectional Dynamic Microphone

The Subkick was the original commercial version of the old recording-engineer trick of hanging an NS-10 woofer (wired through a DI) in front of the kick drum to pick up more of the low frequencies of the drum — it is a 6.5'' speaker driver mounted inside a drum shell, with Yamaha’s ball-style tom mount and a tripod drum stand attached.

It has a reputation for poor transient response; most reviewers pair the Subkick with a more-traditional mic to pick up the beater attack, and blend in the Subkick’s signal as desired.

Yamaha

The Subkick consists of a 10''x5'' birch and mahogany 7-ply shell that houses a 16cm, 50-watt low-frequency driver cone that acts as a diaphragm… While its large diameter enables the Subkick to capture the natural low frequencies produced by the bass drum, it can be used in tandem with a standard kick mic setup…

The mic puts out a hot signal; many users suggest padding the input at the board, or inline to prevent the mic pre from clipping.

One of the advantages of this mic is that it has a natural low-pass filter effect; it passes very little signal above about 300Hz, which means little snare and no cymbals will be present in the Subkick channel.

EQ Magazine

It has become indispensable to me. I’m sorry Yamaha, but you’re going to have to send me a bill — I’m not sending it back.

There is a Subkick thread on Gearslutz filled with testimonials from people praising the Subkick and/or praising their DIY versions built out of throwaway speakers and discarded snare stands.

MIX

A nice trick is to use the naturally clean Subkick signal to feed the key on a gate used for the internal kick mic, resulting in an easily accomplished clean kick signal.

The Yamaha Subkick is also known as: sub-kick, SKRM100, SKRM-100.

Specifications

Pickup Patterns	Pads & Filters
Bidirectional (4.5 mV/Pa; 50 - 2000 Hz)

Coil Diameter	Impedance	SPL/Noise
n/a	9 Ohms (Low)	SPL n/a

Weight	Length	Max Diameter	Interface(s)
4000g (141.10oz)	127mm (5.00'')	254mm (10.00'')	3-pin XLR male (1)

Power Specifications

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