No.. just turn the gain down on the mic.. drummer singing 2” away from a mic will pick up a lot of the kit.
I use an E835 and sing right on it… no, I’m not a drummer, but one should pretty much be “on” any mic when on a live stage.
I understand your reasoning on the drummer although I haven't seen that be a problem, especially if they have their kit mic'd. Normally placement slightly below the drummer pointing up at an angle to his mouth works fine. The cardiod pattern of the Shure 565SD, SM58, and Sennheiser e935 has excellent rear and side rejection. The reason I didn't buy the Sennheiser e945 was specifically because the rear rejection on its super cardiod pattern was not nearly as good as it is in their e935. And of course, there's a big difference between 2" away and 6" away. But like you say, if it's a problem, turn down the gain a bit and raise the level on his mic as needed.
And I don't really agree with you about being always "on" the mic in a live situation. That absolutely depends upon the singer, the song, and the harmonies. The guy who sings lead on most of the songs in one of my groups absolutely eats the mic and the proximity effect has a positive effect on his voice. It can be a little thin without it.
I've been playing live situations since 1966 and back then we very much sang close to the mic. I had a Shure 585D back then and the rest of the group had those EV 664 mics. But back then, if your polarity on you mic didn't match the polarity on your bass, you'd get a nice shock to your lips if you got too close to the mic. Back then was before we had polarized and grounded plugs that could only be inserted in one way. We learned quickly to be real careful about how close we sang to the mic and about matching polarity. But this was high school and harmonic blend wasn't a bit priority. So most of the time we sang close to the mic.
But when I started touring in 1971 using my 565SD that wasn't the case at all. We had 4 lead singers - female vocalist singing country and rock, guitarist singing Creedence Clearwater songs, Conga player sang Elvis and Tom Jones as well as some country, and I sang most of the rock songs that weren't female vocals. We worked out harmonies on every song so there was 3-part harmony behind the lead vocalist. If you recall the 5th Dimension, we did a number of their songs.
When singing harmony, you have to listen to your placement in the vocals and adjust accordingly to get the blend of sound you need. Typically, if you're too loud, you back off the mic a bit to compensate. If you need to be louder, then you come a bit closer to the mic. It's known as working the mic and it's pretty much required when singing multiple part harmony. Even if you're the only one singing a harmony part, you need to be sure you're not louder than the lead vocals. If you are already eating the mic and eat the mic regardless of what everyone else is doing, your harmonies will suck.
If you have a really good sound tech who EQ'd out the proximity effect from your mic and he is familiar with all the songs that you sing lead and harmonies on, he would have a heck of a time making all the adjustments at each song, at each place there's harmony, to do what the singers should be doing on their own by working the mic. For me, with either my SM58 or my e935 I get a far better sound at about 2" away from the mic and the Sennheiser sounds better with my vocals. And if I do what you say I "must", I lose the subtleties of dynamics and inflection that are important parts of the songs I sing.
So, for me, 2" back is best. That might not work at all for you and I doubt there's any broad generalization that will work for everyone.
