EQing drums can be a handful as you have a lot of individual components taking up virtually the entire frequency spectrum as a sum. Let’s cover the best EQ for drums, both the best plugin and its settings to get every single piece of your kit sounding their best.
Best EQ for Drums

My favorite EQ for drums is the FabFilter Pro-Q 3. It also happens to be my favorite EQ and plugin of all time because of its versatility; it’s the one plugin I have on arguably every single track in my mix.
It has sidechaining abilities for getting the bass and kick drum to work together. It has the ability to turn any EQ band you create into a dynamic EQ band, allowing you to tame boxiness on the snare, harshness on cymbals, etc. proportionately only when it becomes more of a problem, yielding more transparent, natural, and ultimately better sounding results.
Let’s talk how to use the Pro-Q 3 on every component in your kit with my recommended settings for each piece, though admittedly you can apply these settings to whatever EQ you’re using in your mix.
If your EQ of choice isn’t a dynamic EQ, you might check out the FREE TDR Nova which I recently did an overview on as the best free EQ plugin.
Best EQ Settings for Drums
Let’s do a snapshot of the entire kit taken from my drum EQ chart before we get into the specific settings for each piece of the kit:

Note that this is taken from my free and complete EQ cheat sheet, so grab that for free for quick and ideal settings you can dial into every single instrument in your mix to get instantly better results.
Kick EQ
I always refer to the kick drum as the major anchor of your mix. It establishes the timing and rhythm of the track and drives it forward. If your kick isn’t setting just right, the entire mix will suffer considerably.
As such, follow these best EQ for drums settings specific to the kick to carve out what’s not working and, in a couple rare cases, boosting what is:

I always recommend that you high pass every single track in your mix, even in this overview on EQing a kick drum where we’re dealing with the lowest frequency instrument in the mix in your kick.
Admittedly we’re only high passing everything below 20Hz, but that’s a conservative recommendation. The human ear can’t perceive anything below 20Hz, so absolutely nothing is being lost here. You can be a bit more aggressive, aiming for 40Hz, to create more mixing headroom, just make sure you can hear the difference as you sweep up.
The fundamental body of the kick exists around 50-80Hz. On FabFilter’s Pro-Q 3, you’ll find the visual peak in this range as the kick plays is the core of its fundamental. You can add a small boost here to add some more body or, if your kick was recorded poorly, you can even supplement it to artificially add body to your kick via the sine wave kick drum trick.
I like a complimentary cut around 150Hz to create room for the bass (see my recent tutorial on how to mix drum and bass together to really get them to gel).
I also like a small cut around 400Hz to clean up some of the boxiness on the kick. It’s not as bad as the snare, but the kick still benefits from it, placing a great emphasis on its transient click and clarity, plus its body via subtractive EQ.
Lastly, if the kick isn’t asserting itself in the mix after you’ve got the level where you want it, try a small boost around 3.5k to help the transient punch come through. An admittedly conservative low pass around 15k is also optional.
Snare EQ
If the kick is the anchor, the snare really drives the energy of the mix, earning its spot on the shortlist of most important elements of your mix.
This snare EQ chart will demonstrate the best cuts and boosts to make on your snare to get it sounding and sitting just right:

Now that we’ve gotten our kick EQ’d to taste, it’s time to ensure the lowest of frequencies are dedicated to it, starting with a high pass filter on the snare. 70Hz is once again a conservative recommended point; you can sweep up as you pay close attention listening for any audible change in its tone.
Once you hear its body begin to thin, back up 10Hz and leave the filter there. This will remove bleed and allot that frequency space to the kick, making the kit sound a lot cleaner and more impactful.
The body of the snare exists in that 150-200Hz range. You can cut or boost here if you want to add clarity or body, respectively.
Similar to the kick, I like a cut at 400Hz to remove unwanted boxiness and mix mud from the snare. This is especially useful on live recorded drums when you have a lot of bleed and room reflections which build up in that 400-600Hz range to detract from the overall sound.
This is the first instance where you might want to use a dynamic EQ cut, setting the threshold so that it’s only cutting or cutting more when there’s more of a build up in this range so that you’re not cutting needlessly (check out my overview on how to use dynamic EQ).
If your snare wasn’t tuned properly, you might have some ringing creating an unflattering tail. You can attenuate this effect with a small cut around 800Hz, but note that alternatively you can add roundness to a snare where this isn’t an issue with a small boost here instead.
Because the ringing might not be constant, just more pronouncing on certain hits, this is another instance where you might want to use a dynamic band rather than a static/conventional band cut.
The other artifact which comes from improperly tuned snares is a buzzing which manifests around 3-5k. A small dynamic cut can mitigate this effect on your snare, just set the threshold when you hear the ringing and adjust it to taste. A lot of times you can’t COMPLETELY remove the sound, but you can bury it enough without sacrificing from or cutting into the tone of the snare too much.
A small boost around 5k will help bring out more of the transient of stick on the surface of the snare, helping it cut through the mix (just make sure you set your snare’s compression attack slow/long enough so it doesn’t swallow up said transient!).
Once again, you can low pass around 15k as an optional final step to create a little more space for the cymbals.
Toms EQ
Tom EQ can be a little trickier because we’re dealing with drums of different sizes, even in the same kit. Understandably, the general rule is the fundamentals and various notable frequency ranges of floor/bigger toms is a little bit lower than rack and smaller toms:

With what I just said in mind, your high pass will vary slightly from drum to drum. 50Hz is a good starting spot for your heaviest/floor tom with a bit higher for the racks. Remember to simply sweep up until you hear that tone thin, then back off a bit.
The fundamentals of the floor and rack toms vary considerably. You can cut or boost a floor tom around 70Hz (its fundamental is typically just a little higher than your kick) to reduce boominess or add body and richness, respectively. With a rack tom, it’s more around 350Hz where you can cut or boost to reduce muddiness/reflections or bring out more of the body.
You can mitigate ringing with a dynamic cut at 400Hz on the floor tom and clean up some boxiness with a dynamic cut at 600Hz on the rack tom.
The transients of the toms are likewise the stick on skin which manifests around 5k or so. Try a small boost to keep them present in the mix if they’re not assertive enough after you’ve got their level set to your liking.
Hi-Hat EQ
Unsurprisingly, now that we’re shifting to cymbals, everything shifts higher as is shown in this hi-hat EQ cheat sheet:

The body of the hi-hats typically starts around 400Hz, so we can safely high pass at 150Hz and sweep up considerably without worrying about its tone. This is obviously a great way to clean up a lot of bleed you get from the rest of the kit on live drums that you might not want, leaving these lower frequencies for the close mic kick, snare tracks as well as any overhead or room microphones you’re using to pick up the whole kit.
Speaking of that 400Hz, you can boost or cut here to balance out a top heavy hi-hat with more body OR add high end clarity to a bland or overly thick hi-hat, respectively.
The harshness you get with some hi-hats can be tamed with a dynamic cut around 4k.
You can add a little sizzle and life with a small boost around 7k.
Like the conservative 20Hz high pass filter on the kick, the hi-hat thrives on its alternatively high frequency crispness. With that in mind, I typically don’t like to low pass much lower than 20k.
Cymbals EQ
Cymbals likewise thrive on the crispness of the top end, so our cymbal EQ reflects this. These are typically are overhead mics, so we’ll be picking up some mid and top level bleed which can actually add to the profiles of some of the pieces like our snare.

I like to high pass my cymbals around 200Hz, once again to remove bleed and unwanted or unflattering frequencies which aren’t adding anything to the mix.
The body of the cymbals are around 300-400Hz, just a bit lower than the hi-hat. If you want to add a little more fullness, you can try a small boost here or likewise if the cymbals could benefit from a bit more clarity then try a small cut to add to the top end via subtractive EQ.
While a lot of the bleed gives the kit its liveliness in the mix, you may find the snare bleed is a bit boxy in that 400-600Hz range. This is another candidate for a dynamic EQ cut to manage this range on the cymbal mics for only attenuating when the problem manifests, so set your threshold for when the snare plays.
Similar to the hi-hats, our ears are especially sensitive to the harshness of the cymbals in the 4k-5k region, so a small dynamic cut can tame this. Speaking of which, check out my tips for treating a harsh mix.
You may also get some harshness on the overtones in the 8-10k region, so a small dynamic cut will likewise treat this. If it’s not a problem, a small boost can add a little sizzle on that top end and add some edge to your cymbals, not to mention brightness to the kit overall.
As for low passing, I generally go for 22k which is the absolute top of the practical frequency range of our mix.
All of these moves for the best EQ for drums should have the individual components as well as the entire kit sounding appreciably better.
One last time, make sure to grab my free and complete EQ cheat sheet for tips on how to EQ every single track and instrument in your mix, achieving better results in a fraction of the time!