Absolutely nothing wrong with supplementing or replacing drums with samples! I have a friend who’s a very accomplished engineer and musician, and they do it for pretty much every project.

Weird microphone tricks (e.g. a 57 on a kick drum) are just stopgap solutions when there are no other options, kinda like replacing a bad kick drum sound — the most important part is to trust your ears and have fun!

Slightly off center and almost touching the grill is pretty standard placement for micing a cabinet, I think! I usually try to make a tangent line between the 57’s capsule and the cone of the speaker.

I’m right there with you about the B52 on a kick drum — that’s definitely my preference too unless the kick drum doesn’t have a port, in which case I usually go for a D112.

One could mic an entire band using just 58s and 57s, if push came to shove. Live sound can be a weird thing lol

Two or three inches up from the bottom-center of a non-ported kick drum works in a pinch, but never tried it with a ported head.

I believe I’ve seen a bass cab mic’ed similarly as well, though I for sure saw a Beta 58 (not a 52) used for this purpose quite a few times by pointing the center of the capsule directly at the bottom-center edge of the speaker ---- looks like partially mic’ing the wood, but I remember it worked really well!