Just curious to see what others think/do. If you wanna bring out the click/beater sound of a mic'd kick drum, do you prefer a parametric with a narrower bandwidth, or a high-shelf? I use both, but to my ear, a high-shelf almost always sounds more natural.

You are seeing why they say "cut thin, boost wide" Check out storm recording studio's free exciter vst, it is very often used on my kicks

For some reason I've never used an exciter on a kick - will try that asap, sounds cool. Other than that I can only agree with anticlick, that's what I do as well. For more air I like to use a drum replacer and add a sample of the kick recorded from the overhead to the "normal" kick - normally you don't hear much of the kick in the overheads when the whole kit is playing but this way you can add as much as you want. A cool effect sometimes. Regards, - Jonas

Losers 50hz Kicker JS plugin has been getting some use on my kicks lately! Makes for the BOOM, as opposed to the BLAH. ;)

Moving the mic around inside the kick will probably be the best option, than tweaking it with the eq. I'm pretty new to this stuff, but I have found that getting it right without the eq (on the kick especially) will save you some stress. It's amazing the different sounds you will get inside a kick drum depending on where it is positioned..

First, cut 170 if there's a paper/cardboard sound. Note this is fairly close to the "farty" 240hZ portion of Bass guitar which is usually in need of a cut. The transition at this range is usually good for seperation of kick and Bass. Work with it. I Boost 4KhZ on most kicks.

Always look at 400Hz and reduce - cleans up the kick dramatically.

I usually like to cut with a low shelf. Sometimes I'll use a sample in metal/punk type music but I avoid it.

ive been using the Waves SSL Channel Strip w/ Chris Lord Age presets as a starting point, those unfamiliar, def check it out....great base point for some eq/compression. has presets for alot of stuff to, vocals, drums, guitar, bass....room mics..... check it out