AKG Session 1 Drum Mic Kit Review- The Best Budget Drum Mics?

Recording your drums properly at home can be a tricky skill to learn, but it’s also one of the best upgrades you can make as a drummer. Once you start hearing your playing back through microphones, you learn a lot about your sound, and also your tuning. 

Another challenge is that drum microphones can get expensive very quickly. A single high-end microphone can cost more than some entire drum mic kits.

That’s where something like the AKG Session 1 Mic Kit comes in. It’s a complete seven-mic package designed to give you everything you need to record a full drum kit without spending a fortune.

I’ve spent a lot of time testing this mic set in my studio, and on a couple of different drum kits. I wanted to know how well these mics perform and how they hold up in a real recording environment. Let’s go through it.

What You Get in the Kit

The Session 1 pack includes seven microphones designed specifically for drum recording. You get:

• 1x P2 dynamic mic for the kick drum

• 4x P4 dynamic mics for snare and toms

• 2x P17 condenser mics for overheads

This essentially covers the classic multi-mic drum setup. Kick, snare, toms, and overheads are the foundation of most drum recordings, so right away you’ve got the core pieces you need.

Everything comes in a nice aluminium carrying case, along with all the clips for mounting the microphones on your drums and stands. 

It’s a neat, tidy package that keeps everything organised, which is actually quite helpful if you’re regularly setting up and tearing down your recording gear.

For drummers who are new to recording, having everything in one box like this makes the whole process much simpler.

Build Quality

Considering the price of this kit, the microphones feel surprisingly solid.

They’re not ultra-premium studio microphones of course, but they don’t feel cheap or fragile at all. The metal bodies are durable for regular use around a drum kit, which is important as drum mics take a bit more punishment than most microphones with accidental stick hits.

The clips hold the P4 snare and tom mics securely in place on the drum hoops, and once everything is set up, the mics feel super stable. The mics don’t spin, wobble or drop at all, which are things I’ve experienced with even more expensive drum mics.

The included carrying case is also a nice touch- making it easy to store the microphones between sessions and when you’re transporting them to rehearsals or gigs.

Overall, the build quality is exactly what you’d hope for at this price point. Practical, solid, and perfectly usable for home studio setups.

Sound Quality

The main question with a budget drum mic kit is always the same: does it actually sound good enough to record high-quality drums with?

After spending a lot of time with the Session 1 kit, the answer is yes – but I do have a couple of criticisms.

The P4 dynamic microphones used on the snare and toms are great. They capture the drums with a focused sound and do a good job of isolating the individual drums from the rest of the kit.

I personally really like how they sound, and absolutely do the job. For toms especially, they work really well once you dial in a bit of EQ during mixing.

The P17 overhead microphones are arguably the standout part of this kit. These small diaphragm condensers capture the cymbals and overall kit image nicely. 

They add clarity and brightness and just do a really good job of gluing the whole kit together in the mix. And I think these perform better than you might expect at this price.

But from all my recordings I found the P2 kick drum mic is the weakest part of the drum mic set. It has a noticeable attack, but it lacks low end and doesn’t have the punch or character of more premium kick mics I’m familiar with, like the AKG D112, Audix D6, Sennheiser E901 etc.

However, with a bit of EQ and compression in your DAW, you can shape it into a usable kick tone. You might have to wrestle with it a bit though to get it exactly how you like. 

Overall though combining everything together, the overall drum sound is very usable and you can absolutely produce good recordings with this setup.

Ease of Setup

The Session 1 kit is undeniably straightforward to use. There’s nothing complicated about the setup. If you’ve got an audio interface with enough inputs, you can mic up your entire drum kit pretty quickly.

Kick mic inside or just outside the kick drum. P4s on the toms and snare. P17s as overheads above the kit. That’s basically it.

And as I mentioned earlier, the mic mounts and clips hold onto the drum hoops nice and strong so there’s no slipping or spinning of the mics. They stay perfectly put. 

The only downside I found with the mic mounts for the P4s is that there isn’t much adjustment in the way of positioning them. It’s pretty much fixed to a standard close mic position. So you don’t get the same flexibility as you would with some other drum mic mounts.

Who This Kit Is For

This kit really makes the most sense for drummers who are setting up their first proper drum recording setup.

If you’re just starting out with recording your drums at home, this gives you everything you need to begin learning how to mic a kit properly.

Once you get more serious about recording, you might eventually upgrade individual microphones. That’s totally normal. For instance, I would consider upgrading the snare mic to something like a Shure SM57, and the kick mic to an AKG D112.

But as a starting point, this kit gives you a very solid foundation.

Verdict

The AKG Session 1 mic set is an affordable way to learn drum recording, experiment with microphone placement, and start capturing your drum sound in a much more professional way.

It isn’t trying to compete with high-end studio microphones, and that’s completely fine. That’s not what this kit is for.

I’d say that for drummers building their first home recording setup, it’s a really good place to start.