When recording the bass drums, we compared El Diablo with a Soundelux E47, strongly inspired by a Neumann U47. Mics were put in front of the bass drum.

The first recorded BD was a 22” maple GMS. This modern bass drum is ideal for rock, with its round and punchy tone. The El Diablo performs well and the mic's SPL handling capability is very good. Compared to the E47, the El Diablo delivered a more complete sound: you can hear everything, from the beater transients to the “boom.”

We were in a cold sweat about our first extreme test : putting the El Diablo inside the kick, through the event... But there was no problem, not an ounce of saturation, the sound was still perfectly clear. Admittedly it had a lot af bottom end, and was less interesting than when the mic was in front of the bass drum, but Crowley & Tripp have taken up the technological challenge.

The second BD is a 24” birch Mapex. Huge kick, lots of bottom end. In this context, brillance isn’t that important and El Diablo has no particular interest. There’s too much low end, when the E47 does a better job of keeping the balance between beater and “boom”.

The last BD was a Gretsch 1964 Vintage 22" birch bass drum. Of course, the sound was... vintage. The El Diablo did a good job, but sounded better when used on the modern BD. Here is the E47 on the Gretsch bass drum.

The conclusion to the first part of this review, is that the El Diablo is a demanding mic. It is at its best when used on modern bass drums with round and balanced sound. It perfectly emphasizes their sonic qualities and brings lots of possibilities for mixing.

We added an audio example of a Slingerland snare drum. El Diablo delivered a very large but dull sound. Hence the necessity of a second mic if you want to capture the snare's high frequencies. Here is the same snare drum mic’ed with a SM57.