Hey, good job on the website. 8-)

You'd be well-served looking for a nice condensor mic and pre-amp. For 3 g's you can pick up a pretty nice combination.

one can never have too many preamps. Maybe a nice channel strip like the Millennia STT-1

You should do pretty well with the advice already given. I have been searching the same list as well and somw ideas are:

Preamps -
Great River ME-1NV $1100
John Hardy M-1 $1200
Speck Electronics MicPre 5.0 - $900
TAB-funkenwerk V-78 $1100
etc

LDC - Huge selecion at $1000 and up

Cheap Tube on the side Studio Projects TB1 Microphone @ $250

Good hunting, plenty to choose from.

This is a great question. But the answer is simple. Buy the most high-end gear you can, because in the end the gear's longevity and the pleasure you get from it is well worth the extra $$. Buy less items, but higher end items. I just had a similar situation, not so general though. I wanted the best system for recording a hand made German piano within a certain budget. I'm from Indiana, and Sweetwater here is the obvious choice, but they wern't of too much help. I went to Vintage King Audio (up in Michigan) that specializes in both high-end and vintage stuff. Mike Nehra is the brains behind the operation, and he got me on the right track without being pushy. So contact him directly. He's a highly experience, intelligent, and ethical recording engineer, and won't steer you wrong. Also, besides working with Mike, do LOTS of research.

Definitely a very cool site you have. I dig your logo graphic too.

Forgive me in advance for my first post on here being long, but I think I have some useful info which will help others in your position as well.

I agree on getting the best gear you can afford, as long as you are educated in your buying decision.

That said, I didn't see anything mentioned about acoustical sound control on your list of equipment (i.e. sound treatment). Have you touched on your room acoustics? This is the single biggest oversight of home studios which will effect your end-result most. People spend tons of money on great speakers and mics, but won't get their true intended response unless the room has reasonably balanced acoustics.

I'm not sure if you have a lot of right angles and/or parallel walls in your tracking/mixing room(s), but if so then you will want to address this (assuming you haven't already).

A good analogy is to think of how a guitar supports certain harmonics. There is a bridge and a nut where the string streches accross. This distance will support certain harmonics, and your room(s) is/are no different. The distance between parallel walls in the room will support certain harmonic frequencies and not others (the farther apart they are, the lower the "problem frequency.") You can test this by playing a tone (not sure what frequency, but typically I recommend something 250hz or below) and move around the room. In a "problem" room, you will notice dips and gains in the intensity of that frequency.

This is a big reason why so many home studio recordings don't "travel" well (i.e. play with the same result on any strereo). Typically, the low frequencies are the problem areas and the mixing/tracking rooms are typically why.

If you haven't addressed this, that should be your next investment because all of the best gear in the world won't effectively compensate for imbalanced room acoustics.

If you do already have the rooms effectively treated, then I would say mics and preamps. The pres in the 002 are ok, but even running your main vocal mic into a dedicated pre like a Universal Audio, Avalon, Summit, etc will yield you notablely better quality of the tracking.

Let me know if you have any other questions, and again, sorry for the long-winded reply.

Shawn, thanks for mentioning the room acoustics issue, which I agree is fundamental. Coincidence, I plan to phone FullCompass tomorrow during business hours to order some Gepco cable and Neutrik connectors. I'm a real fan of Gepco 5522M and highly recommend it.

then I would say a thank you is in order for doing business with us. :D