How do people treat spill between drum mics?

Now that I've a handle on my cymbal problem, I would like to know how people treat spill between drum mics.
 
At this stage I am setting up an OH, snare, rack tom, floor tom and kick mics, and while I've managed to get   decent overall tracks, on listening to individual tracks there is a lot of spill between adjacent mics.
 
I know that some spill is inevitable, but I think I'm hearing to much kick in the snare mic, and too much snare in the kick mic. I'm not too concerned about too much spill in the tom mics, as the toms are hit only occasionally, the gap between hits can be edited. But editing is more difficult in the snare and kick tracks as kick and snare are busyer and cymbals overlap at times. I suppose mic orientation could help, but this is limited by the proximity of the drums.
 
I have tried using the gate in the Pro Console with some success but don't feel confident with it as I think it affects the sound. Also that begs the question, should the gate be on the way in, or after recording, like I have done?
 
So, how do you pros handle spill, or am I worrying too much about it? 
 
 

How do you treat spill? Mostly - get em in phase - eq out the ugly stuff - then don't worry about it.

depends on the song and the mix.
 
some mixes, rely on all that spill to 'glue' the whole set together.
 
other mixes, you don't hear it, i'll actually blank out all the empty parts of all the drum tracks by removing the audio between the strike and the end of the decay.
 
several ways to do this...
 
sometimes i'll mix the two techniques together,
let the spill over remain for certain sections,
nuke it on others.
 
 

If you do decide to use close mic sounds and distant mic sounds eg overheads it is important to get into shifting the timing of the O'Heads in relation to the direct sounds.  If the O'Heads are 6 feet above for example they will be roughly 6 ms late compared to the direct copunds.  I have found it is interesting shifting the timing of the OHeads back slightly.  The effect can be quite pronounced.  It is also interesting to delay that sound a little more too sometimes for a different effect.

As usual, I can rely on considered advise from this place.
Thanks to you all.

The old mop and bucket.

Very careful gating (i.e., adjusting the parameters of the gate) followed by manually removing anything the gate did not catch.  Personally, I like the Sonitus gate.
 
Mic’ing inside of the bass drum helps.
 
For mic’s outside of the bass drum or even a mic on the underside of the snare a tunnel may be helpful.  This can range from a professional mic isolating setup to a simple moving blanket.  I’ve experimented with moving blankets and found them to be from modestly useful to a waste of time … but modestly useful might be all you need so, worth a try.
 
The crash cymbal bleed in the bass drum mic can be problematic when trying to get a cymbal crash to sit in the mix.  If you find yourself doing something like putting a volume envelope on a crash hit in the overheads you may want to listen for the amount of bleed in the bass drum.  A better option might be to simply cut and paste the bass drum happening under that crash.

Here is the professional version of a tunnel (i.e., mic isolator) from Clearsonic.  You can do a homebrew variation using boxes or milk crates for structural support and then drape quilted blankets (or moving blankets) over the whole thing to isolate you mic.

http://www.clearsonic.com/skt3.htm
 
Isolating the bottom snare mic entails wrapping the snare like a skirt with a blanket.

Thanks quant, very interesting and creative.

I can only speak of my experiences but they may lend some info.  I believe if you close mic well and set the gains correctly on the way in, the signal to noise ratio will be very high on the close mics. ie the sound they are intending to hear will be just at the right level and any other unwanted sounds will be at a very low level. And low enough to gate easily or use a downward expander set the right way.
 
I have found Rode NT5's are excellent as overheads, slightly out the front pointing in toward the kit and up at a reasonable height.  If set correctly these OHeads can actually reject a whole band and a PA even very well.
 
I play a Sonor kit and the drums are exceptional.  For kick I have got the hole in the front (6" or so and I put the mic right inside.  I have got a little blanket my son used to lay on as a baby, when folded up just right sits nice in the bottom and can be easily adjusted inside.  It just touches the front and batter heads.  I find this internal blanket can be used to really set the kick drum sound from well rounded and longish to short and snappy.  I sometimes place a small brick on the blanket once it is sounding right and it never moves after that.  Don't forget wooden beaters sound very different to felt beaters. Use the right one for the style in hand.
 
On toms I sometimes use those damping rings which you can buy or make from old heads.  I have made those hoops from 1/4" wide up to 1" wide for all head sizes.  The wider ones dampen the toms much more.  The narrower ones let a little ring back in and on the snare that can be real nice. It is easy to get a decent tom rock sound with those.  In other more Jazzy situations I tune the toms differently and let them ring more naturally of course.  Pitches need to come up for Jazzy styles and lower tunings for Rock.
 
Most of all get the drums sounding killer in real life then you will have an easy time thereafter.
 
On the hats I mic them with a condenser mic but have the rear end of the mic facing the snare and the front part aimed at where you are hitting the hats.  With care you can reject a lot of snare here.  Filtering after the recording in post can do wonders too on hat mics.
 
It is very essential to not only play nice groove wise but hit all the surfaces you have available with the correct amount of force to just make the sound you are after.  Cymbals do not need to smashed in order to hear them, often they only need to be stroked.  (tell that to EVERY drummer you know!)  The snare is a loud drum and too many drummers play it too loud.  Toms and the kick benefit from a bit of power behind those strokes.  Beater control on the kick is important too.  It needs to hit the head and get right out of the way of the head immediately after so the head is free to vibrate and hence complete the sound.
 

Totally can relate Danny.  Steve Gadd was pretty much my studio drummer idol and he used the "old" method back then for hundreds of albums.  Check out the tape on these toms:
 
http://asia.yamaha.com/lo.../00022591/00022591.jpg
 
http://www.drummagazine.com/images/gear/081010-Steve-Gadd.jpg
 
Then some rings and gel:
http://img.youtube.com/vi/pKSiDsZH1b8/0.jpg
 

There were multiple methods used back in the 70's.  Tony Williams never used tape on his drums, and he used very large drums for a jazz drummer with a 14x24 kick, that he only used the old style felt strips wedged under the head against the bearing edge, no pillows or anything.  He used clear Remo CS dot heads top and bottom which have a very focused tone, and he would tune the heads higher than Gadd would.
Peart, Palmer, Bonham, none of them used much if any muffling on their kits.  They all have different sounds but they were big and in your face.
 
But yeah back then the norm was taping down everything, even the cymbals some times, to control ring and overtones.
 
One of the craziest techniques I've seen was Simon Phillips using gallon paint cans in each of his 24" kicks to absorb the energy.  He says it gives a very focused sound from the mic.