Non ported kick drum mic'ing revelation...

What kind of mic are you using on the bass drum?

 

Cool trick, I will give it a try next time I'm in that situation. I'm guessing that you pick up a little more attack, which is a great way to balance out some boominess.

 

You will indeed pick up more of the attack (click), however, you'll also pickup every other drum tone/artifact remnant floating around, which is not helpful with a fully mic'ed kit. With that and an overhead like the OP has, then it might work quite well.
I know I've had REALLY great results using a well-EQ'd AT8010 as overhead and Senn E901 in the kick.
Here's some vid recorded Dec 2018 on my iPhoneX from the back of the [narrow] room where both those mics (and only those) were used on the drum kit.
I had the phone in one hand and the mixing tablet in the other

 

This weekend(if not rained out) I'm going to try the one condenser mic technique. You place the mic 2' in front of the bass drum with the diaphragm halfway between top of kick and mounted tom. I have seen this only one time at a small festival and it worked and sounded great.

 

so not even a real kick mic? hmm :/

i like the idea of mic'ing the kick essentially the same way you would all the rest of the drums (batter side) but i gotta think a real kick mic is necessary to get the full response.

also, a kick mic might be a little less sensitive to the bottom of the snare blasting into it.

 

This is probably the most telling part of your "revelation". If we are to assume adequately installed and tuned PA in a given room, there are probably several other solutions that would sound better than a 57 on the beater head. It sounds like you might (or at least think you do) have a less-than-capable PA, and your solution may be one way to make it work with that particular system. If you don't mind sharing, what is that installed PA?

Generally speaking, a "real" kick drum mic cannot overwhelm a PA on it's own. If your house system has no subs, or has sketchy abilities under 100hz in general, you may find the natural roll-off from a 57 at the low end to be beneficial to the overall sound. What a kick mic will get you is the ability to mostly capture the full frequency spectrum of the kick drum, then use other tools (eq, compression, etc.) to tune how much of it actually gets reproduced by the PA. You can't tune what the mic doesn't capture.

Nothing at all wrong with how you're doing it if it works for your situation, but the sound guy in me knows there's more to the picture that might impact how good it is for someone in a different setting.

 

I have used a Beyer M88 on the beater side and gotten fabulous results with a number of drum sets. I usually put the mic boom under the floor tom and aim the mic at 45 degrees across the drum head, with the mic as close to the head as possible. IMHO, the trick in getting a good sound is finding the right distance between the beater and the rim of the drum. The sound is very tight and dry, which I like for live work.

 

just looked that one up, it's not often i see "vocals, bass drum" as the first listed applications for the same mic! reading further they mention adding the pop filter thing for kick drum, did you feel the need or is that more for "in the hole" usage?

 

I do believe a pop filter is a good idea for "in the hole," but we never had problems. I would use the big pop screen that covers the entire head.

I have also read that some audio techs set aside a dedicated M88 for kick.

 

@Wasnex i gotta think that thing would make a great bass cab mic, flat with a beefy low end proximity boost but without being hyped on the highs and scooped in the mids like typical kick mics.

 

The M88 is one of @JimmyM 's favorite cab mics, so you know it's gotta be good . But, he says it's a bit on the bright side like a Sennheiser MD421.