Yaahn Hunter Jr. Breaks Down His Full Drum Mix | Pro Tips, Plugins, and Sample Layering!

In this exclusive clip from our Mix Monday Live series, Grammy-winning engineer Yaahn Hunter Jr. walks you through his entire drum mixing process — from raw stems to a polished, punchy kit ready to sit perfectly in any mix. 🎧 He covers: Using the SSL G-Channel for EQ, compression & expansion Layering dry + slammed + transparent snares for depth Isolating hi-hats with surgical EQ Getting stadium-ready toms using CLA and custom presets Using parallel compression and bus processing Leveraging drum samples from Yosh’s Drum Warehouse Vol. 2 Adding a limiter on the drum bus to tame transients and gain headroom 💡 Whether you mix in Logic, Pro Tools, Studio One, or Ableton, these techniques apply across any DAW and will elevate your drum mixes instantly. 📥 Get the exact drum samples used in this video: 👉 https://gospelproducers.com/product-c... Get Our Mix Templates Here: https://gospelproducers.com/product-c... 🧠 Want to level up your mixes? Grab our professionally built mixing templates designed for all major DAWs — perfect for getting you 80% of the way to a pro mix from the start. 🎛️ Templates available for: Logic Pro X, Studio One, Pro Tools, Ableton Live & more! Timestamps: 00:00 – Intro: Starting with the drums 00:24 – Raw kick drum & SSL G-Channel EQ strategy 01:38 – Expansion vs. Gating explained 03:33 – Building the EQ curve for punch and clarity 04:52 – Snare 1: Dry tone shaping 05:17 – Snare 2: Slammed tone with CLA-2A 05:52 – Snare 3: Transparent snare with heavy compression 06:39 – Snare bottom compression trick (fast attack balance) 08:00 – Full snare layering playback 08:18 – High-hat mic cleanup with surgical EQ 09:27 – Why bad isolation can ruin your high-hats 10:07 – Toms processing & the Racktom preset hack 11:32 – Tom bus processing + Pro Tools EQ 13:01 – Overheads: Creating space for vocals using VMR 14:56 – Drum bus without samples 16:33 – Reverb chain: Snare verb + Drum verb breakdown 17:20 – Pro EQ on kick drum (low-end roll-off) 17:55 – Drum bus processing w/ SSL Bus Compressor 18:50 – Why live drums don’t “glue” without samples 19:37 – Adding Yosh’s Drum Warehouse samples 20:00 – Before/After: What samples do to a live kit 20:55 – Limiting drum bus to tame transients 22:35 – Meter comparison: With vs. Without Limiter 23:30 – Parallel compression breakdown 24:38 – Final blended drum mix playback 24:44 – Drum sample selection: YDW Vol. 2 25:39 – Snare sample layering + reverb-only snare trick 26:46 – Outro: Subscribe, download templates, and go mix