You did that work for Disneyland!? That's pretty crazy, and now I'm pretty sure you know what you're talking about haha. I'll fill you in on the situation I'm in currently and maybe that'll clear some things up.
I'm down in Texas and I've got a pretty good band going. We play blues/country/soul kinda stuff and it sells pretty good here. It's a little too upbeat for bars but it's still pretty southern so we've been getting more and more successful recently and getting quality gigs and festivals and stuff. We are writing songs and we are planning to record an album in about a year or less with a local studio here in town. I'm the singer and drummer for the group, and my guys have really nice instruments and mics and amps etc. and they can play, so I really want to sound the best I can for them, cause they deserve it.
Obviously while I'm in a studio I'll be using whatever mics and board equipment they have on hand, unless I like a few of my mics better, so most of the mics I'll need is going to be for live use.
My kit is an 80s model Yamaha recording custom, and a few different snares
I have a akg 414 mic, and the typical Shure bass mic. That's all.
My friends own some boards we've been using, but I want to invest in a board too, I just figured mics should come first. Most of the time when I play around town or in a studio environment I'm using other people's electric equipment, so I am fairly new to getting into all of this.
Should I invest in another akg 414? I've heard they work well on toms. And what would you suggest I do about my vocals and a mic for that? Thanks for your time and your help, I really appreciate it.
Cool. I see you're in an environment where everybody has good stuff!
I see where you're coming from, but do you really want to invest a lot of money in this? You could spend millions on audio gear, or you could use what the studios already have, no? Because the recording studio is built as a system of parts being used all together, I tend to let the studio provide everything you need to sound good. I've never read anything about guys like Steve Gadd or Jeff Porcaro going into the studio with their own microphones.
Unless, of course, you want to open your own recording studio, which a lot of people have done. And it's cool, but like I said, a whole 'nother can o' worms to learn about.
If you're gonna do it, yes, microphones are important, but equally important are your mixing console and your pre-amps. So, if you buy a AKG C414 microphone at $1000, but insist on only plugging it into a $400 Zoom R16 recorder, it'll be 'ok', but it'll be better through a $1000 pre-amplifier, into that $25,000 mixer, on it's way into ProTools - or better - an old Studer 2" tape machine that's about the size of medium closet!
I think if you're playing out live a lot and want to cover your drums because the sound people don't have enough mics for everybody, any number of those semi-high-end mic packages will do. Shure, Sennheisers, AKG, etc.,...they all make nice kits. But at home in your personal studio, you can use whatever you can get your hands on to spend the time to get the sounds you want. A lot of it depends your environment too. On Zeppelins "When The Levee Breaks", you had to have the drums in a stairwell foray with one mic at 10 feet up, and another one at 20 feet up to get that sound. I read for some rock recording, they took Gregg Bissonetes' drums and put them out on the studios' underground loading dock to get that sound.
So it's all a matter of how far you want to go to get your mental audio vision out. And at what cost? After playing with the gear we have at the Magic Kingdom, I surmised that I'd never be able to afford it for myself, so at home, I stay on a strict budget since my recordings don't get much farther than the occasional YouTube video. Now if I was thinking I'm writing hit songs, then I'd invest in more - and then find a way for it to make me money (which would definitely take me away from playing the drums, and I'm too lazy for that