Excellent advice... and thanks again for the responses..

I've got a £50k budget to work with and treating the studio takes up
about £20k of that. I can use the rest to get a good mic pre and some
vintage mics. I've found the wave bundles can get me by for the time
being but I can see that I'll need a decent outboard reverb unit
(lexicon is high on the list).

As for the business side, yeah, i'm not going into this with eyes wide
shut. I already have a number (however small) of paying clients and
working on a number of independant projects that I can see making a
bit of cash for the future. I have a keen business sense and have a
good 'vision' as what I see as a comfort space for chill-out
environments. I also understand that the whole idea of getting the
best sound out of anybody (or anything) is making sure that they are
relaxed, comfortable and above all, ready!

Luckilly I have some great contacts and friends in the advertising
business who are all keen to see this succeed and are already prepared
to feed me a small percentage of thier work to 'sniff' me out and make
sure I can deliver what I promise (I'm also using them carefully for
getting my name around and expanding my network wherever possible).

Thanks again for the advice, well received...

S.


wrote in message roups.com...
i would have to say you are thinking a bit small. to compete in the
professional world, you are not going to be able to get by with
prosumer equipment (hence, i imagine, roger's comment). you can keep
the pro tools and logic, and maybe get by with the little tannoys for a
while, and you may find some use for the sm57s (they can do
surprisingly well at many applications). but you pretty much need to
upgrade your entire signal chain, and more prosumer gear isnt the
answer. project studios can get away with rode mics and FMR preamps
(not that they are necessarliy bad gear, they just dont bring clients
in the door), etc, but again, to compete with pro facilities, you are
going to need to be able to offer some very high-end gear in your kit -
millennia media HV3 preamps, john hardy, great river, etc, with some
real mics, vintage U47/67, ela-m251s, a few U87s, C12s, etc, for
vocals, a few pairs of nice SD mics for acoustic work, DPA 4011s,
schoeps cmc64s, senn mkh series, AKG c480s; a couple of variations of
outboard compressors, LA2, etc. manley pultec eq's, AND a comfortable,
professionally designed space, both for tracking and production, and to
accomodate visitors/clients. keep in mind that a working studio is
far more than rooms and equipment (and even skill) - it is a business
venture, requiring business skills, marketing, advertising, accounting,
etc - those things are easily as important as the hardware in defining
your potential success. best of luck.