Ride Cymbal Mics

Looks like they have a waiting list.  I'm not rushing to buy anything right now. 

My tinnitus deeply loathes 10khz shelving. (no chessparov, it doesn't like Ikea shelving either)

How are you positioning said ride spot mics to minimize bleed?  I'm usually mic'ing from the top (tried underneath once and found it was like mic'ing a gong.  didn't like it).  I like my drums and cymbals pretty tight together (economize motion - I don't want to have to swing my arms like a gorilla to reach something) - but that of course makes for more bleed between close mics.  But sometimes I'm finding crash cymbals (especially big ones as are popular these days) are bleeding into the ride cymbal mic.  I've tried raising the crashes a bit (helps some) and I also tried a piece of foam (sort of sitting on top of the boom stand that is holding the ride mic and reaching over the ride cymbal).  The idea was to reduce bleed from the crash cymbals above and to the sides.  I don't think it's really done much though.  Those crashes are probably reflecting off the top of the ride and back up into the mic.   I think the mic I'm using right now (Slate ML-2) is probably just plain old cardioid (Slate never published any specs on the mic itself).  So maybe a hyper or super-cardioid mic would be better... or maybe I have to completely reposition the cymbals (and retrain many years of muscle memory... yikes).

Anyway, what are your tips/tricks?

Anyone else using a hypercardioid or supercardioid mic on ride cymbal?  I'm thinking I may want to try one to see if it reduces some of the cymbal bleed (already repositioned cymbals and the mic).  Looking for bang-for-the-buck kind of mic (i.e. limited budget).  Probably SDC, but LDC might work as long as its not too large and heavy (if it has great rejection).   A couple that came to mind are of course the Oktava MK012 (with the hyper capsule) and the Sennheiser e614.  What else can you suggest?

The Oktavas are really cool little mics. And because they're modular, you could start with the hyper cap and add others later for different uses. 

102 was my first "step up" mic years ago. I still use it all the time. Sounds great on a lot of stuff. Even with a mic locker that now fills an actual locker, I still bring the 102 on a lot of stuff.

Just in the last few months I've used it on guitar amps, piano, room mic, drum overhead, acoustic guitar body mic, and kick drum. The thing is so versatile and so small that you can pretty much just plug it in anywhere that a cardioid is appropriate. Oh, and it has won more than its fair share of vocal mic shootouts around here against more expensive opponents.

To me the 102 is the utility infielder of my mic locker, but the utility guy who plays every day and can bat anywhere in the lineup (sorry to non-baseball fans). 

Best part... you can find them for $500 used all the time. It probably won't be your best mic but I guarantee it will get used. A lot.

It’s so curious to me that mk-012 hyper has recently become the preferred cap mentioned frequently, there was a solid 20 years of it being the LEAST preferred capsule. I certainly never used it as it never won over the cardioid or omni and thus sold mine off eventually.

The first suggestion of usefulness was Oktava marketing the ‘film set’ with it for boom use along with the HPF adapter. The HPF adapter is a hopelessly noisy addition (science, damn you) and an O12 of any type is more prone to wind and vibration pickup than most SDC’s I’ve encountered. Seems to be mentioned frequently as a budget entry piece for film location work.

Incredibly rare i spot a cymbal, if it was free i’d probably lean on M160 or M130 first.