I also forgot to include that i will mostly be recording rock based music and i want to record the band live with few overdubs im looking in investing into Pro-tools.

Digital won't ever sound like analog tape. Ever. If you want that sound, you will need a decent reel tape recorder and a mentor to teach you maintenance of said recorder. Then after you have your initial recording you can dump it into your PT interface and go to work.

If you've already accepted that you won't sound like your vinyl then half the battle is done. Sennheiser makes some good mics. I'd also plan on having a couple of Shure SM57's on hand as well as considering a pair of Fathead II's.

Others will come along and give you some input on outboard gear. The last time I was on the road was 2002 and there might be different players in the game now.

thanks for the mic info and on a side note ive accepted it haha. :D

huntd:
Whats your budget?
I just bought a Allen & Heath ZED16R firewire mixer which has 16 channels, great preamps, great EQ on each channel, has an analog warmth and would be an excellent live mixer. In fact you could plug a laptop into this and take it with you and record the entire show. It has tons of output feeds for PA or monitors as well as foldback monitor feeds.
Then bring it back in to your home studio and mix tracks with some DAW software until your hearts content.....I bought mine brand new about a month ago for around $1800...check around the internet
So far I love it and I don't think you could go wrong!

That sounds legit i looked it up it's a little out of my total budget but maybe I could find it used, thanks. Any more suggestions guys!!!

Crap I Earlier I meant to say I'll be recording mostly live to tape with few overdubs not live

huntd wrote: Crap I Earlier I meant to say I'll be recording mostly live to tape with few overdubs not live

To Tape?
Really...what kind of tape....?
I thought you were looking to record into your computer??
Either way it's still "live"....right LOL

yo expression man? i meant comp. i crapped on the protools idea out of logic,cubase,and reaper which is the best for rock and all around easy programming. Also any preamp, interface, and equalizer ideas that arent to expensive it would be much appreciated

A fairly cheap, but good quality interface (what I use) would be Presonus FP-10. That will give you 8 simultanious inputs for recording live. If you need more inputs presonus makes several similer Interfaces with various input/output numbers. Some have more, some have less.

The preamps in the unit are good and clean. Also very simple to use. There is no eq on the unit, but this is fine for me as I like to eq later while mixing.

I use Sonar, but all Presonus units come with Cubase 4 LE sometime with the propak package. So you would get everything you would need to record a live band setup, added a few cables and such depending on how you plan on going about it.

I would suggest a good quality preamp if you decide to overdub vocals with a good Condenser mic. There are many diff types depending on what sound or (coloration) you are looking for as a finished product.