good cheap gear

[mrlizard]

Here is a list of cheap recording equipment i think is good.

sm57 - 60 quid (pretty much the industry standard on snare and guitar, i hate them on guitars but through the right pre they can sound like a different mic) A much more worthwhile purchase than any SE elecronics, Behringer or samson condensor at the same price.

FMR audio RNC - 180 quid, Stereo compressor, totally incredible for the price, you'll find them in pretty much every top studio in the states for that reason

beyer ribbon mics, m160, m260 - excellent overheads, piano mics

for vocal mics, AKG D112 gives you an amazing vintage vocal sound, doubles as a kick mic if you want a crappy 80s sound, works well with a beta98 on the batter side as well though. you could pick one up for 80 quid second hand.

sennheiser 421, 100-150 second hand, amazing all round mic, vocals, guitar, kick, bass cab.

Audio technica 4033, 100 second hand. fantastic on bass cabs, vocals. Total workhorse mic, i've got two and i love them.

Studio monitors - passive Dynaudio BM5's, totally amazing cheap monitors

[Thee Alex]

Personally I think 'cheap' should mean anything between £20 and £60.

All the things you've listed are well out of the price range of the typical UGS dole/call centre/record store income.

Is it possible that you're not the best person to define 'cheap' gear these days Robin?

[mrlizard]

Originally Posted by Thee Alex

Personally I think 'cheap' should mean anything between £20 and £60.

All the things you've listed are well out of the price range of the typical UGS dole/call centre/record store income.

Is it possible that you're not the best person to define 'cheap' gear these days Robin?

I think i'm in a pretty good position to define cheap gear, given that i've been working as a recording/live engineer for the last 6 years

[Thee Alex]

See? You're being condescending again.

I've been doing it for 17 years, but I'm not going to tell people what is good or bad. Different things work for different people.

[mrlizard]

Originally Posted by Thee Alex

See? You're being condescending again.

I've been doing it for 17 years, but I'm not going to tell people what is good or bad. Different things work for different people.

exactly, and i'm offering my opinion, is the point of a forum not to discuss and offer your opinion.

[Keerin]

Alex - can you recommend some cheap recording gear what is good?

Like Robin said, the whole point in a forum is to express individual opinions.

[Thee Alex]

Keerin, personally I have found the Fasttrack USB m-audio box that I got for about £50 to be very effective, and the Behringer condensor mic I got for about £40 is not a bad mic by any means.

But that's just what's working for me, it doesn't mean it's 'right'!

[ubermensch]

Originally Posted by Thee Alex

See? You're being condescending again.

I've been doing it for 17 years, but I'm not going to tell people what is good or bad. Different things work for different people.

I'd say different techniques were more subjective than the actual gear itself, to a point. While it's true that different things work for different people, if you're serious about setting up a home studio to record some of your own music then it's a good idea to make an investment now rather than later. By that, I mean why buy a crappy preamp now, only to realise that you might actually want to get something half-decent in a year's time when you discover that you actually LIKE doing recording.

That's part of my trouble, and I wish the money I'd spent initially on gear was preserved and put towards something I'd like NOW. But people make these mistakes all the time when it comes to musical equipment; people will happily shell out £300 for a crappy guitar amp, only to realise that for an extra £100/200 they could have something that they might never need to think about changing. I've done it before, but that's because I'm a silly billy.

Home recording might start off as your typical interest in laying down some guitar tracks, purely just to have something of your own recorded to let people hear. But then, it has the potential into develop into something that you might actually enjoy doing, and if that means recording bands then you'll want as much good gear as possible in order to satisfy your clients. If you're recording people in your own home, then it's still classified as 'home recording', however much you want to spend on your setup. The difference being that better quality gear will inevitably result in you having to do less work to get it sounding 'professional'.

I would define 'cheap' in this context as whatever your willing to spend to get the sound you want. I, personally, would spend the above amounts because I've spent much more on other pointless shite in my lifetime, and I'm not a huge earner.

The point being, you could have an amazing sounding, studio quality preamp and compressor for just shy of £500 and you can't really argue with that. If you start recording bands for cash, it'll pay for itself.

Sorry Alex, but Robin's right in this sense. While your gear might work for you, it's not a professional piece of kit and its bad to recommend this line of gear for those interested in developing a good home recording setup. What you need are good workhorses that are adaptable for a variety of environments, and believe it or not, they do actually exist in this field.

Sorry if it seems like I'm coming across as a wanker, but that's not my intention.

My main point is that people more often than not will not be disappointed by shelling out a little more for the above equipment. There's a lot of hype about overpriced products floating about the musician's market nowadays, and you'd pay a lot more than what Robin's suggested above for gear that is half as good.

[mrlizard]

Originally Posted by Thee Alex

Keerin, personally I have found the Fasttrack USB m-audio box that I got for about £50 to be very effective, and the Behringer condensor mic I got for about £40 is not a bad mic by any means.

But that's just what's working for me, it doesn't mean it's 'right'!

I'm sure it works perfectly for what you're doing, i'm not arguing that, for me, because i'm recording different stuff all the time, i need stuff that can pull it off that particular setup wouldn't work.

The behringer reference mic is pretty good actually.

[Thee Alex]

Originally Posted by ubermensch

While your gear might work for you, it's not a professional piece of kit and its bad to recommend this line of gear for those interested in developing a good home recording setup.

The centre of my recording set up is a very nippy Mac that shits on PCs. I get clear, distortion free signal from any source I chose when recording and then have industry standard software that quickly enables me to do pretty much anything I want with that signal.

And I've done it for less than a grand.

These things are just tools, and a basic tool well used will still do the job, and do the job very well indeed.

IMO.

[njw]

Originally Posted by Thee Alex

All the things you've listed are well out of the price range of the typical UGS dole/call centre/record store income.

I didn't realise all the people on UGS fell into the dole/call centre/record store category... I don't know of many people here who work for a record store, and so you assume everyone is either employed in a call centre or is on the dole.

AND you keep calling Robin condescending.

Think about it for a second.

[Thee Alex]

Clogs, most people I know in real life from UGS are either on the dole, work in call centres or work in record stores. So what do people you know do? And are they earning the big bucks needed to spend over a ton on a rack mounted compressor?

And yes, I DO keep calling Robin condescending, cos he is.

[humndislocation]

Personally I would classify something in the £100-£200 range to be cheap, unless you're buying several pieces of equipment in one month.