Tired of finding $1000+ pieces of equipment in these kinds of lists? I am. So on this budget, I am not going to include your interface which I’m going to assume accepts either a ¼ inch cable or XLR cable. We’re only talking signal chain here, meaning how we get the sound of your voice or instrument into your recording device. I am going to confine this article furthermore to gear and methods I have used and achieved acceptable results with.

To make this fair, I Googled the microphone package I like for this exercise and picked a big online retailer. That retailer doesn’t charge shipping or tax, so we’re already saving money. I decided to buy new because that is easier for you to duplicate. You can most likely find better prices on gear using eBay or Craigslist, but again, it isn’t likely we’d find the same prices at different points in time.

I Googled the mics first, because as a package, I thought this might be the hardest thing to find. It’s also the first place you can screw up your sound and we don’t want that, at any stage. For the microphones I chose the MXL 2003 & 603 Microphone Pac Plus. At $169.95, it is a steal and you get two good sounding mics that between them, can handle voice, acoustic and electric guitars and piano.

When proper mic positioning is used, you can get a good amount of clarity out of both mics, then if you feel like, you can rough the sound up after you get your takes down.
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