The quality (or lack thereof) of the room you record in will be more of a factor than "which pre".
Is your room acoustically treated and/or do you have access to one?

An even bigger factor to improve the recording would be to help your friend "de-nasal" his voice.

One way that can help would be to record him as it normally sounds. Then have him balance the vocal tone for another take, and compare both versions together.

The typical response is that he will think his voice sounds too "bassy"-until the playbacks...
(been there done that!)

Chris

I have a grace and it has a very clean sound- it copmplements any mic you use it with- they usually go for about $450 + used and you can find them new on e-bay from sound pure for $529- I've never seen them below $400

I just did a search for Grace designs in completed items on E-bay and the lowest one went for is $529- of course, that's new but you'll be lucky to find one in the used market and if you do they usually won't go below $450- if you see one for $350, grab it!

I've seen mixed reviews on it but the M-audio Tampa can be had for $349 at http://www.digitalproaudio.com/manufacturer/m-audio.html

This unit had been selling for $650 when it first came out. It has two mic pres and 2-channel optical compresser. Perhaps overpriced at $650, I suspect it may be a real bargain at $349.

Of course you could just get a Mackie board.

Disclaimer:

I haven't used or heard this preamp personally, but Roger Nichols says he's used the Rane MS-1b on the Steely Dan live album -- which says a lot! It also scored high in a shootout he did.

Read his comments here:

http://www.ioforums.net/forums/view_topic.php?id=15&forum_id=5&highlight=rane

The Rane will only cost you $150 --

http://www.topdjgear.com/rane-ms-1b.html

This leaves you $250 for another microphone choice, since the NT-1000 may not turn out to be best for the particular vocalist you're bringing in. For a nasal voice, I might try a Marshall MXL V67 ($100) or V77 (a bit more than $250) to smooth him out a bit.

If the V67 works, look into an Oktava MK012 ($99) small diaphragm mic for the guitar.

My personal experience is that with a lower budget, various mic choices often make a larger difference than preamp choices.

Just my opinion.

Most any manufacturer has mic pres that end up being around $500 a channel, so if you buy used, you can knock that number down.

I bought an ATI 8MX2 used for $1400, which gives me 8 channels of Paragon pre and 8 limiters for under $200 a channel. New it would be about $400 a channel. Toft, Oram, Prism, and others make mic pres in the 2 to 8 channel per box configuration that cost about $500 per channel.

Bill

Just so you know, soundpure also has a site (not ebay) - soundpure.com. The guy (Todd) has been very helpful to me and will beat advertised prices. I'm sure he doesn't stock most of the stuff he sells, but it does seem like a decent organization when I did business with them.

I bought my grace from the soundpure guy- I paid $560 for the high gain version to be used with ribbon mics-