A sub kick is a microphone traditionally made by Yamaha to capture the sub-low frequencies of a kick drum.
The reason you may want to use a sub kick is when you want to capture a bigger-sounding kick. Traditionally in rock, funk, or even EDM and dance music where sub lows are a driving force the kick in the mix.
This is especially useful in a two mic setup and can allow you to experiment with dual-mic techniques that focus on kick attack while also capturing the low end.
All you need is:
a speaker from an old home theater system.
an XLR cable.
And a knife or wire cutters.
First, cut the XLR and solder to the speaker with the Pin 1 (often marked red in the cable) to the positive and Pin 2 and Ground to the negative.
Set these points and boom you’re done and you have a working microphone / subkick
So right now you might be asking why does this work?
Dynamic microphones and speakers are both parts called voice coils, and a speaker is just a microphone wired in the opposite direction.
Don’t start using your sm58s as speakers
Also if y’all want to try this out with different size speakers your results will vary but might result in very cool tones.
Check out the full video below for Building Your Own Sub Kick
Don’t forget to DOWNLOAD THE MULTITRACKS AND THIS CHEATSHEET
