making drums sound beefy is all about how theyre mixed.


you can compress and distort them shits as much as you want - but any real producer (i.e people that have mixed on analogue equipment or understand the basic principles of layering a track), understand a sounds 'fatness' is all determined as to where its placed in the overall mix.

a lot of those vintage drum breaks everyone loves arn't actually that thick and crusty - its how they sit in the final mix with bass lines running alongside them.

for example, if hi hats require more brightness (i.e. sound too flat and dull), the immediate thought it to 'boost' them at 10/16 k (i.e. increase their trebble).

the actual professional way to combat this problem is actually to do the opposite (i.e rather than boosting the trebble - take the low end off them - i.e. reduce the other side of the eq).

if you play high hats on their own, you wont see the difference, but if you reduce the low end on them whilst the whole track is playing - they appear more 'brighter' or 'trebbley'.

same goes for mixing kicks and snares in a final track to have more 'snap'.

mixing is all about taking shit away, not increasing things.

if you were to simply increase 'brightness', you just end up with unwanted distortion with clashing frequencies (e.g. vocals taking up the same high end frequencies as hi hats).