I own a studio in Texas and I produce and engineer all types of music. If someone offered me $200 to fly to another studio and record 12 songs of a full band, I would laugh at them.

I have recorded many bands who wanted to record as "live" as possible. If they were REALLY tight, I could get the rhythm parts in 3 takes, and then inevitably still have to do punch-in fixes of each seperate rhythm tracks. When I say rhythm I mean drums, bass, and sometimes electric rhythm guitar.
I would have the singer sing a vocal that the band could hear through headphones, but I wouldn't record his vocal, saving it for overdubs. Any acoustic instruments, lead instruments, lead vocals, and backing vocals are done as overdubs.

When I record a vocal overdub, I have to set the levels just right, which usually means that much of the first 2 takes are just practice - for me AND the singer. Most people aren't used to singing into a studio microphone. If they have stage experience, they will usually think the screen should be touching their lips. With sensitve condenser mics, they could damage the mic if I'm not careful, so unless I know the singer knows what they are doing, I always use a pop filter. Not so much to catch their P-pops, but to keep them at a consistent distance from the mic.

Setup to record a full band is very time-consuming. When I record drums I use seperate mics on the kick, snare, each tom, and two overheads. This is 7 mics and it is the bare minimum that I will consider using.

For the bass guitar I will run two signals into the board - one a direct feed and another from a mic on the amp.

Not only do all of these mics have to be set up, but I have to run each and every one through a signal chain consisting minimally of preamp,compressor,and EQ. With many instruments the signal chain is much more complex. Each of these pieces of equipment then have to be tweaked until I get the sound I need, not to mention trying to fix the hum the bass player's amp is making and having to wait for the guitar player to come back from the music store because he hasn't changed his strings in a month and I had to figure out why the sound on the guitar was so dull, then send him to get some more strings.

I could go on, but I think you get the point. I cannot afford to let anything come out of my studio that doesn't sound top-notch. Yes it takes time and a lot of effort to make sure it doesn't happen, but my clients love me for it, and my reputation stays intact.

If you want an experienced engineer to work for you, expect to let him do his job the right way and don't ask him to compromise his reputation just so you can save some money.
If you can't stand to pay that much (which really ISN'T very expensive), then get your own equipment and learn to use it yourself. You'd be very surprised when you tried to get a sound even half as good as your favorite album, and found it was a lot harder than you think.

Don't get me wrong. The reason I got into engineering years ago was because I couldn't stand to pay all that money to a studio to record my songs. Boy, have I learned a lot since then!

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Chris

Chris

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/6/chrisgarrettmusic.htm