Drumdrops to release Gretsch 1960s Round Badge Kit Kontakt 5 pack on 3rd Dec with special offer

Drumdrops is releasing Gretsch 1960s Round Badge Soul Kit Kontakt 5 Pack on Wednesday 3rd December at 4pm GMT with a special offer.

The first 10 packs will be free, the next 50 will be £ 30.00, the next 50 £ 40.00 and then it will go back to the retail price of £ 45.00.

Here's what they say:

The Gretsch 1960s Round Badge Kits are legendary kits. Currently they are one of the most sought after kits from that era. Drumdrops recorded this kit to capture a certain sound, the sound of the late 60s and early 70s that came out of Royal Studios in Memphis. Home to legendary producer and founder of Hi Records, Willie Mitchell. This studio was responsible for recording hit after hit from famous Soul Artists such as Al Green and Ann Peebles. Drumdrops studied and recreated the drum sound.

Unlike the one microphone, large open room drum sounds coming out of Motown and Stax in the 60's/early 70's, Willie Mitchell preferred a small dry room, often using three or four microphones on the drum kit. To capture the same sound Drumdrops used the suited dry live room at Miloco's The Square. The concept behind the mic positioning is unique to this release. They used five mic's, each placed in carefully selected positions around the kit, so each mic captures the drum kit as a whole, meaning you can use any one mic as your drum sound, or you can blend any or all of the mic's to create your ideal sound (in the Kontakt pack only).

The drum kit was produced, mixed and recorded by South London drummer Timmy Rickard who has studied the grooves and sound of this great era. It is a classic sounding late 60s kit with wallets placed on the tuned down snares, a tea towel was used on the floor tom and they have recorded the ride with and without a chain.

The kit comprises a 20" x 14" Kick drum, 13" x 9" Rack Tom and a 16" x 16" Floor Tom. The snares used were a combination of a Gretsch Renown Maple 14" x 6" snare with a Red Sparkle finish (c.2010) a Gretsch Renown maple 14" x 5" snare with a Black Oyster Swirl finish, a Ludwig Acrolite 14" x 5" (c.1970) and a Ludwig 400" 14" x 5" snare (c.1960). Cymbals were dark sounding Bosphorous New Orleans Hi Hats (2 x 16" Crashes), a 20" Ride and an 18" Crash. Drumdrops have also included shakers, tambourines and congas.

The recording took place in Miloco's The Square Studios in London. As only five microphones were used Drumdrops utilized the vintage external mic pre's (Telefunken V76's, Neve 1066, Calrec PQ1061) recording straight to Pro Tools. All of the kit microphones used were ribbon microphones. They used 3 x Coles 4038 ribbons around the kit and for the overhead an STC 4021 ball & biscuit. Drumdrops also setup a room microphone which was a U47 FET running through a Calrec PQ1061 Mic Pre. In the Kontakt 5 pack all five microphones can be accessed on every drum using the mic blend feature.

The "Kontakt Pack" has been designed exclusively for the latest full version of Native Instruments Kontakt 5. The pack includes up to sixteen velocities of each articulation and up to 5 round robins. In total it contains 17275 samples. Included in the Kontakt pack is the latest version of the Drumdrops Kontakt 5 instrument.

The key features are:

• Groove Player - There are over 1300 MIDI Grooves that included in the MIDI Groove Player that are played by a variety of drummers. Including many new Soul grooves.
• Step Sequencer - The sequencer has eight channels allowing any eight of the articulations of the Gretsch Kit to be selected and played. The sequencer contains 32 steps for each channel.
• Groove Slicer – The Groove Slicer cuts each MIDI groove into thirty-two sections. These sections can then be played back in a different order to the original depending on what which of the three modes are selected.
• Mic Blend - Here you can control the mix on the microphones used on each channel. You can vary the balance of the three kit microphones with the overhead and room microphone. This is a great feature on this kit as it lets your really get the right sound out of every drum by controlling the mic set up around the kit.
• 12 channel mixer - Each channel comes with a Mute, Solo, Phase Reverse and 2 Aux sends.
• Multiple Convolution Reverbs included, 4 studio Impulse responses and many classic reverbs and effects.
• The ability to change the velocity curve and tuning of each drum.
• Randomise the tuning, velocity, EQ and timing for added realism.
• Multiple Round Robins included for extra authenticity.
• 4 band EQ and Transient Master included on each channel.
• A buss compressor and Tape saturator on the mix buss.
• Ability to route each channel to your DAW.
• Multiple Mix presets included mixed by a variety of engineers, musicians and producers.
• A full version and lite version for use on laptops.
• Multiple MIDI maps included with full compatibility with the Roland TD-12, TD-20 and TD-30 V-drums and the Yamaha DTX-900.

To learn more about the Kontakt 5 pack head here.

Listen to some sound demos of this kit here.

Watch producer drummer Timmy Rickard discussing the recording of the Gretsch kit here

and the mixing of the kit here