The Mic'ed Dholak
Dholak mic (internal view)
Originally uploaded by nulldevice for a while i've grappled with the problem of getting the dholak in the live show. Played traditionally, it's generally laid on the floor and the player kneels in front of it. Obviously, that's tough in a rock-band setting.
So I first tried mounting a tom bracket to it and attaching it to a drum stand. That sort of worked - I could mic it on both ends, but it had this tendency to oscillate back and forth as each strike pushed it around. Not optimal.
I eventually took the easy route of just throwing a strap on it, attaching it to the drumhead bolts. It basically hangs off the player like a miniature dhol. The problem now became micing it - it would require the player to stand in one spot with mics on either side, or some sort of external micing rig attached, both of which were problematic from a stage presence or drum-technique standpoint.
Reading up on how dhol players handle the problem, I found that they're apt to just jam an SM-57 inside the body of the dhol itself, and custom-mount it inside. This seemed like a fair idea, although this still left a few problems - a dholak doesn't have room for a full 57 and a 57 mount inside. And I didn't have a spare 57.
I did, however, have a few spare Nady D-70's. They're respectable, albiet not great, drum mics. They are, however, small, pretty cheap, and come with a screw-ring on the back for attachment to their own mic mounts. Discarding the mounts, I tried a few things. The first was to try and disassemble the mic and place the capsule inside and the body/transformer outside. The advantage here would be that I wouldn't have to drill a large hole in the drum - just enough to run a lead wire through. I ran into two problems: first, I didn't know how to affix the individual halves of the mic to their respective sides and second, I couldn't resolder the mic lead back together because the wires were too short to go all the way through.
Second attempt involved drilling a larger hole through which I could apss the entire mic body, and then screw the ring on like a nut to hold it in place. I tried drilling with a hole saw, but discovered that the drum is thicker in the middle and the hole saw wouldn't go all the way through (and accidentally stripped some of the finish). I switched to a spade bit, gritted my teeth and punched a 1" hole in the side of my lovely red drum. I figured I could always patch the hole up if it didn't work.
I put the mic in, realized it kinda dangled and wasn't flush, so I used my standard cutup mousepad trick to stablize, shockmount, and tension the mic. I plugged it in, hit a few thumps on the bass head and...
Nothing.
Not a sound.
Proceeding to freak out, I took everything apart again and looked it over. I soon realized that I was using the wrong mic - I was using the D70 that I had previously taken apart to try to fit the leads through, so the leads were actually disconnected. Deciding I didn't want to attempt to solder anything, I grabbed the other mic, put it in place, closed everything up, plugged it in and...booooom. Glorious, resonant thumping on the bass head (loud glorious resonant thumping on the bass head, I might add). The trebele head gave me the nice ringy tone, although it's a little heavy on the mid-tones (to be expected from a snare mic, I suppose). But it's good enough.
I spent about an hour with a dholak strapped over my shoulder, a cord trailing me, making loud drumming while I gleefully bounced around my basement.