Mini Drum Shield

For the last few months we have not been using a drum shield and for the most part it's been good. The band loves it and our stage and room is big enough that it's been ok. As a little background, we have been going to a more rock n roll sound and I've been working really hard at creating a really big r-n-r sound while keeping it smooth and for the most part at 95db a-weighted or less.

With these parameters in our room I realized I was right at what I'd call the "snare threshold."  This is the point at which you are able to put enough of the snare in the pa so that the snare and any verbs are fully present in the pa versus the snare mainly coming acoustically from the stage and you are mixing around it.  With no drum shield I was finding that when I'd get the full drum sound I wanted, the resulting overall loudness feel was a little to hot.  I say loudness because i'm not really talking about a large increase in overall db but it made the drums very much more in your face which would increase the complaint ratio.  (this topic alone, the nuances of mixing in this environment, could be a separate blog on it's own.)

So this got me thinking, what if I could have a shorter drumshield who's only purpose was to block the snare from me.  Since we have a long history with drum shields, I found 3 older panels we had laying around and cut them to 34". This height gets us to just under the top rim of the toms with our drummer. The result is I get what I want, less snare bleed to FOH, and Phil our drummer is happy because it still feels like there isn't a drum shield. So far it's been great. I might even experiment with going to just 2 panels. I will say once or twice I've wished it was high enough to block the hihat but it hasn't been very often. 

This obviously won't work for everyone. It completely depends on your room, pa, and your churches worship culture but it's working for me. I'm curious if anyone else has done something similar. Also you actually can buy a very similar sized shield from Clear-Sonic. It's actually a Joe Bonamassa edition shield for guitar amps but it's basically the same size.