Steel drums or steel pans are instruments with a very wide tonal range from bass to soprano, and a tonal quality with lots of complex harmonics.
This is all best captured from a little distance with a good central stereo pair as a matched pair of 4011A cardioids or 4006A omnis, perhaps flanked with another pair of outriggers, as on the picture where a central pair of 4012s (high voltage version of the 4011) is flanked by a pair of 4004s (high voltage version of the 4006).
Steel pans can also be close miked but preferably with an omni, since they don’t have a real sweet spot that can be captured with a directional microphone without loosing vital information. The spot mic can be mounted on the top of the pan where it gets most of the bright harmonics, or underneath where it gets more isolation/less bleed.
Below: a DPA 4061 miniature omni mic on a steel drum.
