New York, NY (May 14, 2024)—Bob Strakele, FOH engineer for both Avenged Sevenfold and Slipknot, has a diverse resume that includes tours with The War on Drugs, Greta van Fleet, AWOLNATION and Erasure, but since signing up with Avenged Sevenfold in 2018, taking over from the late Dave “Shirt” Nicholls, he says, “I’ve been pretty much in the metal scene.” About a year after hooking up with Avenged Sevenfold, Slipknot—who Nicholls also mixed, for almost 15 years—were ready to get back on the road and tapped Strakele for the FOH job. He’s been deeply involved ever since, jumping between the two bands as they each tour the world.
Explaining the foundation of his drum mix, Strakele says, “It’s not a cymbal mic. I am basically catching the big picture, with the mics boomed in from behind, equidistant from the snare. I’m a big fan of building my whole drum sound around the overheads. Everything sounds better to me when I moderately high pass filter them, maybe at 80 Hz or 100 Hz, just to get rid of any rumble if there are subs on stage. But I like to hear that woody snare sound, so I don’t tend to high pass them too hard. And if you add EQ, then you’re taking away from the snare sound.”
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Over the past year, to help maintain a consistent drum mix, Strakele adopted several models of microphones from Austrian Audio and currently uses them with both bands, often making the most of an OC818 pair: “I’m using two Austrian OC818s on overheads, OC8s for my ride cymbals and I’m using the OC7s on the floor toms. The OC818s are what I’ve been using with Avenged. I put them in cardioid to get the rejection off the back side.” He also has a pair of OC18s, he says, which has a fixed cardioid pattern in contrast to the three switchable patterns of the OC818.
The OC7s are mounted on LP brand claws attached to the legs of the floor tom. “They’re not pointed directly at the center of the drum, but they’re not straight down either. They’re pointing maybe three or four inches in from the rim.” The OC7 (and the company’s OD5) has an ingenious swivel-mounted head design, he also notes, that adds flexibility to positioning options when miking a drum kit and space is limited.
