Anyone use acoustic cymbals with Overhead mics & mesh head drums?

[Greg The Groove]

So I'm curious to know if anyone ever has used or currently uses all mesh head drums (toms, snare, kick) but with acoustic cymbals and hi hat with Overhead mics for cymbals? Do your overheads pick up the tapping of the mesh head of the drum pads? If it does how does it sound? Is it noticeable or are the modules sounds masking it when recorded? I bit the bullet and ordered my acoustic kit and Zildjian K Custom cymbals, but am wondering if my ddrum triggers don't work well enough with acoustic heads and I have to use mesh heads, but still would like to use acoustic cymbals, how that would work with the OH mics or even a hi hat mic picking up the stick sound hitting the mesh pads? Thanks

[BWaj]

I have but only playing live, never recording. Live I had no issues. Using the original Gen 16 pick ups I did get way too much pad and stick noise. It's fine as long as you're hitting the cymbal, it's in between strikes and you can easily just cut those parts out in a good DAW.

If you have a good gate, you should be fine using regular cymbals with OH's, imo. Might take a little work but if you take the time to set it up right, you should be good to go.

If you think about it, the mesh heads are no where near what acoustic drums would be, and we used OH's with them in studio with no issues right? It's all about the gates.

[Greg The Groove]

Yes true, but with acoustic drums, the OH mics picked up an actual tom sound or snare drum sound. With a mesh pad, it will pick up the annoying mesh pad hit thuds. So if you can hear it in a recording, it might be a little bit annoying or unpleasant, but then again it might be kinda drowned out by the modules triggered sound, so who knows.

Live, I dont really care cause it should be fine. Im just wondering about recording audio with the OH mics picking up way too much of the mesh head drum sound, especially a relatively low hi hat mic off to the side next to the snare.

[perceval]

Yes, like BWaj mentioned, the gate on the OH is to try and take away that "thud".

I've seen quite a few threads over the years about people using triggered drums and acoustic cymbals.

[BWaj]

So long as you set the gates correct, it should be OK. And the sound of the pad should be much quieter than the triggered sound if it does bleed. So just like if a tom bleeds through on the OH, the actual tom is much louder so it's transparent. You'll hear it if you solo the OH track in between cymbal strikes, but not in the mix.

That's my story anyway and I'm sticking with it!