Try condensing it down to mono. If you still hear a full frequency range, consider yourself lucky. As they say – if it sounds right it is right! People stumble across things that should be ‘wrong’ but sound great all the time. That’s a very common placement for a nice thumpy low-cymbal stereo pair.

At work I’ve got two audio technica 330a’s which are cheap for large diaphram cardiod mics but like a lot of people say- it’s where you put them!

Anyway today I tried laying them out in an X/Y shape but because it seemed to suit my stereo bar, I laid them out ‘horizontally’ ( laid down flat, but faces to the kit) with the grills almost touching. It seemed to me that I got a great stereo image of a drum kit, with them placed at between the height of bass drum and snare and about two feet from the kit. I kept the gain medium on the pre-amp because this rig was intended for a contemporary ‘jazz’ improv. session. I’m writing because I was really pleased with myself, but can’t help wondering whether I’m fooling myself about the result. Can I really have got a 180% image with horizontal mics? surely they should be upright to pan correctly, or am I just lucky and stupid?