Just avoid what they often did on early stereo records, with the entire kit panned hard left or right, and you'll be mostly OK.

There's little point in panning the kick or very low toms at all though. Their frequency range is low enough that humans find it diffcult to place them in space in the first place. Getting too pan happy with things like tom fills can end up being tiring to listen to. Used sparsely for effect, fine, drums hopping around the stereo field all the time, not so good.

As for live sound reinforcement, it's still mostly done in mono to ensure everyone can hear everything that's going on. At gigs where the drums aren't amplified any stereo positioning is lost once you're a few feet away because kits aren't spread out very much unless you've two drummers. Room reflections tend to reduce any stereo effect in any case.

As for "listener or drummer" positioning, personally I go with listener. Though I played for many years with a left handed drummer who played a reversed kit, so I suppose to capture him I'd need to reverse the usual listener perspective.....

Beepster
Any time, man. You can message me a link to your guit work if you don't want it to go "live" just yet.

Thanks Beep, that would be a great help 
 
Where I'm at right now is I've got a 1 bar intro followed by an eight bar power chord progression that loops, in E, at 135 BPM, and I'm practising my "licks" along with that. It's quite amazing really, because I can go for an hour, easily, without a break. My callouses are coming along just fine  (I've gone through the blister stage).
 
This is something I should have done a long time ago, but have never had the confidence to pick up what is, essentially, my main "real" instrument. I'm still a long way off in terms of being nice and tight, and I can't shred by any stretch of the imagination. I'll will have to do plenty of dragging and stretching around to get stuff near enough back on time.
 
Yeah... Having a blast LOL...
 

tlw
personally I go with listener

Thanks tlw... Listener Perspective get the unanimous vote then 
 

tlw
Getting too pan happy with things like tom fills can end up being tiring to listen to.

 
At the moment I'm not altering the panning that comes with the particular BFDeco patch I am using. So, toms are therefore panned, and by quite a bit. I may pull them back a bit more towards centre, now that you've said that.
 
cheers
 
andy  \^^/

tlw
As for "listener or drummer" positioning, personally I go with listener. Though I played for many years with a left handed drummer who played a reversed kit, so I suppose to capture him I'd need to reverse the usual listener perspective.....

Exactly... this throws perspective out the window.
 
I tend to put kick and snare down the middle, then I just spread things out until they suit the song. I try to keep things natural (ie: toms moving in order, ride and hats separated, spread out the cymbals, etc...) but the listener/drummer perspective means nothing to me.

As a drummer and old studio drummer, it was always mixed by listener perspective. I would track with it being my perspective. 
I agree it doesn't matter how you want it but it is always nice to hear the stereo drums like you were in front of them. 

Rimshot
 
I agree it doesn't matter how you want it but it is always nice to hear the stereo drums like you were in front of them. 

Totally 

Yes but the reality of the situation is you would have to be standing 3 feet from the front of the drummer live to hear any sort of stereo perspective. Once you moved a few meters back it would all be moot anyway.
 
What is WAY more important is what the drums are playing. Ordinary playing means an ordinary result at the end. Great playing (or programming) will have a much bigger effect.

Sorry Jeff. What is WAY more important is how you want to hear it. 

I realise now that the original question I raised was silly really.
 
It's funny that, as a music listener, I generally don't really care how I hear the drums. I have just listened to a few commercial songs, from early Sabbath to Opeth's latest, and how the drums are panned (or not in the case of Sabbath) all over the place.
 
It was then that I realised that, apart from a couple of songs where the drums are panned (Home and Minor by Oceansize has all of the drums elements panned well over to the left), I have never said to myself, "why on earth is the ride not on the left in this song."
 
Again, the only reason I raised this question in the first place is because BFDeco has the option to switch perspective.
 
And, further to that, all of the drum VSTi I use have their kit elements panned (except for those you naturally expect to be in the centre of course).
 
What is clear to me for the future, is I will be toning down the "out of the box" pan setting from now on, bringing toms and tins to a more, but not quite, central location.
 
 
cheers, and thanks for all your thoughts
 
andy

I have since the beginning of time ( or at least my mixing ) mixed from a drummers perspective, mostly as that's kind of how I heard it from playing on stage (agreeing real stereo was lost).
 
However, now that I am dabbling in live video and multi track recording I clearly want things panned as seen in the video or it's just wrong. How far? Well too far is weird unless the drummer is ape like with very long arms. :)

Interesting thing Andy is that I actually like panning toms very wide these days.  Maybe keep the OHeads a little tighter in toward the centre perhaps but I like hearing tom fills flying from one side to the other.  Seems to have a lot more impact for me anyway.  If three toms are involved eg 2 hanging toms and a floor tom, what I like to do is put the higher pitched hanging (close miked) tom hard R the lower pitched hanging tom centre and the floor tom hard L.
 
Often tom fills involve all three toms so you get a nice movement that way if they are. Kick down the middle but I sometimes like panning the snare just a smidge to the right of centre. And hats over to the right side a little more.
 
I guess it is all taste I suppose.  When Steve Gadd is playing it all doesn't seem to matter much! I start hearing other stuff then.