Need advice on Purchasing Music Recording Equipment?

You can get a pretty good mic for about $150-200 these days. Sampson is a good brand, but there are others. Check out EBay, there's a lot of good used stuff there.

As for recording, it would be nice to have a hard drive recorder with a mixer and everything but that's going to be beyond your budget. The cheapest, simplest thing is to get a good sound card (SoundBlaster X-FI is nice) and a USB mic. Then you can record right on your computer. A regular garden-variety desktop computer will record better than any tape recorder ever made!

You need software too. I use Adobe Audition and I love it, but then I got it for free. There's a freeware program called Audacity that works just great, though the user interface is kind of strange. There are many multi-track recording programs, and even MIDI sequencer software records audio tracks these days. it's just that on a PC you can't record more than 2 tracks at once, unless you go for some fancy equipment. With a USB mic., Sound Blaster and Audacity (minimum investment) you can 'stack' tracks one or two at a time, as many tracks as you want.

Get computer software for recording - about $100 and sometimes included with the "interface", mentioned below.

Get an interface for Audio recording to the computer - about $100 or so. Look up reviews to see which ones are good. I want one that can handle 8 channels at a time but they are $500.

Get a $200 condenser mike and a mike stand, preferably with a shock mount if available.

Don't bother with an 8-track recorder - your computer is the recorder. You need one that can handle the demands of the software - the older they are the less likely they are to work for this. Max out the RAM memory if you haven't already done so.

When you record, turn off all unnecessary programs. If you are using a PC do the defragging. Restart the computer. Open only the recording program. Follow the instructions and experiment a little bit too. You are on your way.

To start with, just any mic that is used for computers would do. Ask your computer store. Some headphones come with a mic attachment too. Most computers will have a 3.5mm mic jack. As for programs, to start with, programs that come with the operating system (i.e. windows, or Linux or what ever is running in your computer) will allow you to record sound and then play it back. (To tell you what program you can use, need to know what OS is in your computer). Once you get things going, can look for other programs.