This is an AWESOME case study! You guys rock 
I’d love to see you guys come up with more of these. I’d be happy to come up with a way to group these kinds of threads as a resource for people visiting, beginners, etc.
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Wow. 
Who needs drum tracks??? Beyond impressed.
It looks like that is pretty much the consensus here. Thanks for all the info Andrew.
Thanks Jonathan - great info as always.
I think this is the most centered one yet. I’m a little confused though. Would the right panned snare show up in the sides? Can you do all your panning stuff first, then switch it to mid/side, or is that what you did?
Haha! Look what just showed up in my in-box!
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Here’s another try. Basically I tried Boz’s approach: panned the snare to center, used Mongoose to mono the kick, used the Scheps 73 EQ in Mid/Side, and then did some p-comp with the API 2500. At least the kick/snare is centered which was the primary objective. Thanks for the tips everyone!
I always mix overheads first, then blend in the "rooms’ to the overhead pair and subsequently fill in with the spot mics.
The overheads generally sound something like this (I let it fade back to the dull unprocessed sound a couple of times for reference).
Note the balance control is set to 45% Left on the corrected track!
Edit: The Elysia is actually a Tilt EQ not a semi parametric, before somebody asks why Im ‘adding 600 Hz’ with it. 
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Something I’ve arrived at recently is not really boosting the highs on the overheads - the overall drum buss gets a couple of dB high shelf lift, and the mix bus gets another dB or 2, but I like how smooth the cymbals can sound if instead of boosting the highs, I just cut out the stuff I want less of - the low and mid mids, maybe a little dip where the hi-hats are a bit shrill…
I’m not one of these “cutting is better than boosting” people, I have no compunction about adding insane amounts of boost if it sounds good, just something I was thinking about this morning.
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Thanks guys. @Cirrus - I have used a Dynamic EQ / DeEsser to tame overly raucous cymbals too. I definitely like the “bigger picture” approach to this. As has been said many times, it’ll all about context.
I think this is going to be the “rule of thumb” I start taking! Usually I try to get the close mics going and sounding “good”, then “fill in” with the OHs.
After reading through all these responses, it strikes me that the OH mics are generally where your drum “sound” comes from, and maybe those tracks should dictate the direction you mix the drum kit? After all, there are plenty of minimal mic setups that record the kit as a whole. In fact, "close mic-ing (sp?) is actually not the natural way we hear drums…
When I say ‘fill in’ with spot mics, i literally mean just add maybe two impact frequencies.
For instance, 300Hz and 3kHz on a snare drum, and kill the rest with HPF/LPF etc.
Sometimes the Tom spot mics are only LPF at 300Hz and HPF @ 3kHz as the midrange is already there in the room mics.
The point is that you dont need to ‘double up’ on stuff thats already there in your main stereo pairs.
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When I get a chance, I will put up the rest of the kit for this this little section. I would love to hear how all of you guys mix this!
Do you have a tape saturation plugin with a variable LP rolloff?
This thing kicks ass on the cymbals. I’ve been studying it extensively over the last few days been trying it on a bunch of stuff. Its a tape-distortion-on-steroids unit with compression emulation built in and a hell of a lot of attitude.
As you increase the warmth settings it rebalances the saturation of low harmonics vs higher frequency harmonics giving you the appearance of rolling off top end without just dulling everything down like a poorly implemented HF shelf does sometimes.
Nope. The only tape plugin I have is an AirWindows one. Are they especially good at smoothing out harshness?
That Fatso does sound nice. Then I checked out its price… 
I think this is one of the greatest harshness smoothers ever made. The Waves C6 is my other go-to for smoothing abrasive brittle chunks of cymbal buildup and rattle.
Yeah. That Fatso is pricey. I can see where $150 is a lot for a single plugin. Just an idea. I was assuming you’d look at the plugin…I just posted the demo of the hardware because I think that video does a better job of demoing the unit than anything else I know of.
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Always full of information. Thanks!
The overheads are not really that difficult, its nailing the room pair that makes it interesting.
Well, I originally started this thread to pick your collective brains on how you’d approach “fixing” this particular track- basically centering the kick/snare.
Now… after hearing what you guys have done with just the OH tracks, I’m really curious to see what you’ll do will ALL the tracks, and HOW you got there! I’ll put 'em up as soon as I am able. 
New thread with all the drums started here:
I’ll probably take a crack at this tomorrow.