How should I assign drum channels with a limited mixer?

[stickcharmer]

I have a Mackie Profx8. One of my channels will have to be shared, ie toms/snare,  toms/bass drum, snare/BD. What's the best way to approach this so that when I EQ I don't lose the character of each instrument? As it stands, cymbals/Hi Hat are on 3, BD 5, snare/toms 7. When I brighten 7 to bring out more attack on the toms the snare sounds too high.

[Coda]

You do have a pan function. If the Snare is too high, why not either move the pan control a little to the toms?

The nature of drums is that the most important instruments (hihats, kick, snare), should have their own channel, but the snare is so important, it really should have a channel and EQ to itself. I would probably put the bass drum with the toms, don't shelve the low freqs with the lowcut switch and see if you can get something that works for both.

I see you've compromised by getting the hats and other cymbals into the same channel, they are similar frequencies, just be aware that when playing live the cymbals are usually pulled back a lot by the sound engineer, but not the hihats. You also need to make sure if you are playing with others that they have got a solid lock on your hats otherwise your group's timing will suffer (just don't ask me how I know this )

BTW - If the mixer has an fx loop maybe try using that as an extra channel?

[stickcharmer]

I'll look into that. The toms seemed to be a bit muddy with snare on the channel. I'm running them through an Alto TS215A. Might have to revert back to my simmons DA200S to monitor at home....