Which Mic and Preamp to use?

Use something like a Stedman pop filter to reduce plosives and breath pops.

Make sure the room you're recording in is fairly decent sounding, or use some moving blankets to create a temp vocal "booth" around the singer when tracking so the tracks are not ruined by weird room reflections.

As far as what mic / preamp to use, that's extremely subjective and IMO, the ideal preamp / vocal mic will vary from singer to singer. However, if you're looking for something really good, and you're going to rent, then I'd look to something like a Neve 1073 (preamp / EQ; also rent a UA LA2A or 1176 or an Empirical Labs Distressor for compression, if desired) or the new Neve 8801 (preamp / EQ / dynamics processing) and pair it with something like a Soundelux ELUX 251 or Telefunken ELA M251E. All of those items are pretty darned expensive, but they sound terrific and will work with a wide range of vocalists.

I think he said "rent", not "buy", and you can probably rent those items for a week for around a grand or so.

Ballpark rental rates (per day - many rental houses will charge you for four days at the daily rate when calculating "weekly" rental charges):

ELA M251 $125 - 175

ELUX 251 $ 90

Apogee Rosetta 200 $ 85

UA 1176 / LA2A $ 45 - 60

EL Distressor $ 60

Neve 1073 $ 50 - 70

If you went with a Neve 8801 (I have no idea who rents them or how much the going rate is... but let's assume a weekly rental of about $400), you wouldn't need the separate compressor. You'd still need the mic and the converter... so let's call it $400 for the Neve channel strip, plus $360 for the mic, plus another $340 for the converter for a grand total for the week of $1,100.

Probably not quite into the "second mortgage" range, although if you want to BUY them...

I should have mentioned that in my original post - thanks for catching the omission Ken.

Those prices seem high Phil. We're paying "half or less" of that to rent some of those items here in Cowgary. Don't forget to ask for monthly rates when renting, they're usually a fraction of the daily. A couple guys can pitch in and rent an LA2A for the month for about what it costs to rent it for a few days.

Good points about the lower monthly rates and for the "going in on it with a buddy" suggestion.

I don't frequently do a bunch of renting myself (I own some of the items, on that list ), so I went off of memory, plus took a quick look at a couple of rate cards for LA area rental houses, one in NYC and one in FL, and did a quick average of them...

Of course, the longer you rent, the lower the rate tends to be. It's more hassle for them to rent out an item for only a day, vs a week or a month, and the charges tend to reflect that. And if you're renting several things at once, you can sometimes negotiate a lower "package" rate. My main point is that it probably isn't going to require a second mortgage to rent a kick butt vocal signal path for a week...

Stated another way -

Kick butt vocal chain rental for one week = ~$1,000

A killer singer, and a producer / engineer who really knows how to get the most out of all of them = Priceless.

if you decide to buy it they deduct "60% of your rental fees to date" from the price.

Very cool.

The thing about rentals is that if you do it a lot for the same item, you're probably better off investing in the item. If you only need it very occasionally, or to meet a "special request" from a client, or even to evaluate and compare a couple of items you're considering purchasing in your own room, it's nice to be able to rent... but outside of that, I'd rather just buy it.

I hear you about the need to balance client demand and equipment budgets...

I like to have the basics I need actually here and ready to go, but like everyone else, I'm not made of money and can't just buy anything and everything; which means occasionally a client will want something we don't have in the studio, which means renting. But in most cases, my clients leave the gear decisions to me... they do their job (writing and playing great music) and expect me to be competent at doing my job - part of which is gear selection and knowing how to put it to use. But if someone wants something I don't have, we have a couple of choices...

A while back, I had a rather well known gospel singer (former Harlem Gospel Choir member) with a spectacular bass voice come in and track vocals for his album. The basic tracks and orchestral recordings were done at Abbey Road in Studio 1, so it was first-rate stuff. The singer had previously used U87's on all of his vocal recordings, and was pretty convinced nothing else would work on him, but I don't own an 87. I talked to him about it and felt his bass voice would sound great with one of the microphones I do have, and convinced him to give it a try (for free) first, and if he didn't like the sound of the mic, we'd rent a U87 for him...

He no longer prefers the U87 on his voice. However, if he had felt otherwise, I wouldn't have hesitated to rent the 87 for him.

If I found that people were demanding the U87 all the time, and were unhappy with anything else, then IMO, purchasing one would make sense over constantly renting them. However, for the rare and occasional use of an item that otherwise would spend all its time in the mic locker, I think rental is the way to go.

YMMV.