Can This Gadget Make a Crappy Drum Kit Sound Expensive?

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Music in this episode -

Alfa Mist - No Don't Incomplete -    • Alfa Mist & Emmavie - No, Don’t Incom...  

Kneebody - Drum Battle -    • Kneebody - Drum Battle | Audiotree Live  

Not going to link to the Prince song because they copyright claimed me so F@#$ them

Ben Wendel - October -    • The Seasons: October with Gilad Hekse...  

Full unauthorized collaboration of me/Ben/Gilad playing October -   / b_xrqj4nuzm  

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Anyone who knows me knows this: I'm not a "gear guy".

Part of it is living in New York, where it's difficult to practice at home, and where single-tenant "lock outs" of the type David Cola rents don't really exist unless you're willing to pay the equivalent rent to that of a small studio apartment.

So we share, and I've had plenty of fun airing my public practice grievances in public.

Which necessitates less gear-obsession than those with full-time setups they know nobody is going to touch get to enjoy.

But even by New York standards, I do not give a sh!# about gear. My nearly 20-year-old Gretsch kit sits in bags in my practice spot. I use it on occasion for videos. But mostly I've been using the communal drum kit.

We used to have a Yamaha Recording Custom. Then the owner moved out of the room. And we got the current Ludwig That's Missing One Leg.

All of which is to say it probably won't surprise anybody that I haven't spent a ton of time investing in mics.

I'm essentially "frozen in time" from the year the Zoom Q3HD was invented. Once I owned one, my mic ambitions stopped dead.

Which must've gotten the attention of a friend of the channel, because he offered to send me an EAD10.

First, I had no idea what one was. Then, I tried to refuse. He insisted, so the largeish box arrived at my apartment a few days later.

(Try getting toilet paper, hand sanitizer, weight plates, or meat that fast.)

Knowing I'd want to showcase the unboxing to honor the donation, I waited until I had a whole afternoon at the studio, then brought the EAD, still in the box, to the studio, along with all my camera gear.

As I opened things, assembled them, and experimented with them, I realized "this is a gear review."

Hence, first gear review on the channel.

Now part of me wants to just order a drum kit. Or at least a snare. Turns out, gear videos are fun. And people like them.

Meh - maybe I'll pay somebody on Fiverr to react to me instead.

We'll see.

Anyway, the EAD turned out to be a lot of fun, and to improve my sound production by quite a bit (though, when I recorded this lesson, it was still a bit of a learning curve, so I wouldn't consider the sound representative).

I had no idea how well I'd like it, but I'd say the EAD is the perfect tool for the price: sounds better than a zoom, which it should, as it's nearly twice-the-price. Sounds great with recorded tracks, as you'll see.

And better by a damn sight than many mic setups, especially in the hands of less-than-stellar engineers.