musician help, please

[Eore]

my band has reached a point where we will be spending the majority of our time recording. unfortunatly, there is no studio within reasonable distance, and nobody has access to equiptment. so, we are all gonna chip in to buy recording equiptment. we have an insulated, heated shed with good echo, we also have amps and all the mics and speakers we need. we won't be using a computer program, and we arent sure what equipment we need. any help?? we have decided we need at least an 8 tracker, but what else do we need? nothing too exensive-any individual item can't be over 1000 dollars!

[Craig Mac]

Since you have all the mics, what you need is multi track recorder. Unfortunately when you get up in the record 8 simultaneous track area you quickly get up in the over $1000 dollar range. Tascam, Fostex, and Korg all make these type of units. The one thing you need to keep in mind is that if you want to plug your mics directly in to the unit you need phantom power available on the track. Example, if you use 6 mics for drums you need 6 preamp XLR inputs on the board to get the mics to line level. I could give you a lot of reasons why, but the bottom line is you want a unit with 8 XLR inputs. Some units come with a cd burner as well. Personally I would go computer based, the possiblities are endless. Good luck with the recording, let us know how it comes along.

[Eore]

i only use 4 mics for my drums. we are planing to do drums, both guitars, bass guitar together and overdub the vocals-or would you recomend a 4 tracker, and do all the guitars, then overdub the drums and vocals? we might do this, what would i need for this?

[Craig Mac]

You will run out of room on a 4 track quick, waste of money if you guys are serious about it, IMO. You would best served getting one that has 16 tracks that way you have a lot of room for overdubs(guitar or vocal). You would only be able to record 8 at a time, but you would have the room to mic each drum and overhead mics for cymbals, your drummer will love that. The problem with just getting an 8 track and recording live is you will get a lot of bleeding in the mics from the other instruments in the same room(adds noise to the recording). We always did drums and bass together, then guitars, then vocals, and then DJ/Horns last. Some times we would have one of guitar players play along in the headphones to help the bassist and drummer out. Oh yeah you will need a few sets of headphones and a headphone amplifier too, but those aren't that much. Then you will be ready to mix it, burn it, sell it. You might spend a little more than it sounds like you want to, but if you can get a decent demo out and sell it(not give it away), you can recoup some of your investment.

[Eore]

thanks for the help!!