yeah i saw the word “toms” and it didnt jump out to me until after I started my thread lol.
its interesting because now im listening to some Zep and so far its not symmetrical lol. The few songs I have listened to sort of have Bonzo and Jonesy leaning left with Jimmy and Robert in the right channel and maybe Jimmy has another guitar wide left
No big deal, you are right about finding unique panning tricks that really only come to light when you put your mixing hat on. Listening for pleasure sometimes does not reveal these hidden gems.
I expressed my somewhat hate for a wide kit (not really cymbals, but toms especially), but I do find interest shoving the kit one side , bass git. on the other. Though this is usually found in earlier recorded music.
[quote=“cptfiasco, post:4, topic:383, full:true”]
, but I do find interest shoving the kit one side , bass git. on the other.[/quote]
why u gotta bring the Beatles into this? lol
My personal preference is for the drums to sound “normal”, meaning they are set up such that a regular human drummer could actually play them. Crash cymbals are not way wide of the rest of the kit.
That said, I agree with the Cap’n that whatever serves the song is the way to go. My preference is not a hard and fast rule…
some of this Zep is tripping me out though. on most of these songs im hearing Bonham only in one channel (headphones) except for maybe a tom of cymbal here and there. Robert is about 20% off center one way or the other and Jimmy way out opposite of Bonham. Jonesy is also rarely dead center.
Its interesting how it generally seems they have about 70% of the sounds in one channel and then Jimmy way out on the other side by himself. hehe, I guess it pays to be the producer
Wider is always better imo. I go as wide as I possibly can without loosing continuity when I switch back to mono. All of my mixes have to work on mono systems.
I use a lot of parallel width processing. All over. Vocals, Kicks, Snares, Bass, Pianos, Guitars… Choruses, doublers, slap delays, early reflection engineers, M/S processing, multi-band imaging…wide is in style right now.
There are a few things at play with drum width.
1- Too wide drums sound unnatural
2- Too wide drums get lost in mono
3- Too wide drums will tend to sound small
1 and 2 are self explanatory. But for #3 think of this: The farther you get away from a source the bigger it tend to sound because it takes up space. (think Bonham) But the farther away you get, the more mono it gets because everything is blending together in a space. So it’s almost like less mono = less “big”.
All of these can be dealt with depending upon the mix and none are good nor bad. I remember loving some 80’s german metal that sounded like each drum was panned to a different degree in the soundscape.
As for cymbals and such… as I said in the other post. I care more about them being panned than the drums. But it’s not complicated. As long as my right cymbals sound like they are coming from the right and left from left, I’m happy.
I’ll add a #4 to this: If you pan toms out wider than your OHs are actually “hearing” them, you will start to mess with the phase correlation and tone may suffer. This is assuming you have squared away the OHs with your kick and snare. If you throw your toms out hard right and left and they sound “better”, your phase is out of whack. If the only way the drums sound good at all is with hard panning, you’ve got something almost 180 out…
And to answer the last part of your question… no. wide drums don’t make a mix wide. A wide mix makes a mix wide… 
But that’s another can of worms…
have fun
rich
yeah, its amazing how, in a sense, “there are no rules”…yet so far I cant get a pro mix lol. Then again, I havent made a massive focused effort yet. I guess thats what 2017 will be
It’s even tripper when you hear Zep in ceiling speakers in an office building or a store. You get a different mix as you wander around…
I actually found speakers out of phase in an insurance office with “your time is gonna come” because there were BGVs but no lead vocals… just vocal verb
later
rich
yeah, there is a breakroom at work like that. I sit under one of the speakers and if there is a real stereo mix I might get a really weird sound lol. Like if they ever played Beatles you’d ONLY hear drums or whatever lol
The wonders of 4 track recording…
four?? shoot, that was after a while probably lol. I cant remember which early band it was, but when they first got a 4 track, they were trying to figure out how in the world they were going to use ALL FOUR tracks lol
Yeah. I wish we had less tracks. said no one ever
its sort of like the quote by Bill Gates, whether or not he ever actually said it or not, “640k of memory ought to be enough for anybody” lol
Once had a meal in a place in France playing classic rock including some Hendrix, it was a restaurant with two separate rooms. One speaker per room.
Can’t remember which track it was, maybe ‘Little Wing’? We had only the guitar, snare drum and some vocal reverb. The next room had the rest. 
As far as wide vs narrow drums, it just depends on the production for me. Sometimes if the kick and snare are louder/punchier/bigger in the mix you can go wider with the cymbals, if you want the drums to sit further back in the mix but still do their job properly it can help to narrow stuff in so they stay focused, I think.
Most of the time i hard pan overhead, and pan the independant toms not to get it too wide. I do love wide cymbals and more narrows toms (more powerfull to me).
Of course kick and snare centered.
It should be depending on the requirements of a track I believe!
I prefer wide drums. Most bands that you listed with narrow drum sounds didn’t have the best recording budgets at the time. If you want to albums by the same engineer as evidence just how much of a difference that it makes, compare “Difficult to Cure” and “Bent Out of Shape” by Rainbow, both recorded by Flemming Rasmussen. Bent Out of Shape features a much wider and rich sound, while Difficult to Cure sounds thin and doesn’t have much impact. Using good overhead and room mics really impacts how large your drums are going to sound. They recorded Bonham with up to eleven separate room mics, not even counting the overheads. Close mics don’t make a whole lot of sense when you think about them, who would want to listen to drums with their ears inches away from the snare drum? It is imperative that you have a plethora of condenser mics around the room. More important though is finding a good drum room.
Cheers,
Doubletrackinjive
Im a big rainbow fan. Pretty sure the budget etc for Bent out of Shape would have been pretty decent considering the previous album had produced the hit “Stone Cold”…so they probably had high hopes for Bent Out.
The production on Difficult and Straight Between the Eyes just reminds me of basic 70s style production with the sort of little cardboard sounding drums. Bent sounds a little more modern and louder
Shoot, even on Bent the drums are nothing to write home about lol
(one of my fave songs…they got that vocal u front)
I am just asking based on the idea of keeping the drums “narrow” (not as wide as possible) to leave room for guitars out wide.
Whereas with wide cymbals essentially the cymbals and guitars will be on top of each other. Obviously either way is used. Maybe some bands like Chevelle favor a more chaotic sound anyway, to go along with their vibe lol. Plus they detune and have a generally low guitar sound so the guitars arent really in the same spectrum as the cymbals I suppose