Critique band's home studio proposed setup

[Ollie_H]

Okay, we want a studio setup for demos and such. I've dabbled in a bit of production, but once we have the gear I'd happily practice for hours.

Instrument wise we have:
2 fairly nice EMG equipped guitars tuned to drop C
2 6505+ 112 combos
An alright bass (unsure exactly what)
Drummers just bought a nice new acoustic kit, and I have a cheap electric kit
Screamer is going to buy a SM58, this is a good choice right?

Our other guitarist has a macbook pro that's like a year old, so were going to use that running windows and reaper.

We need an interface and monitors (that is all, right?)

Our other guitarist is going to buy an interface with a budget of £400, maybe £500 at a stretch. We were thinking a Focusrite Saffire Pro 40?

Monitors we're going to buy between us + money from gigs, budget of about £300. Thinking Yamaha HS50Ms or KRK RP5s?

Would using ampsims and something like Superior Drummer be the sensible way to do this, with the midi coming from the electric kit and edited a little? I don't see us being able to afford a ton of mics for drums very soon.

What kind of quality could we expect to get with this setup, assuming the production is done well?

If you could suggest anything we'd be better off spending our money on, or reassure us if this is the right decision, as this is a lot of money for us, it would be much appreciated.

 

[::XeS::]

Years of study and experience if you want a good quality product. For a preproduction it's better to concentrate the effort to the playing and the arrangements before the quality of the final product.
I worked with a band that spent 8 months for a preproduction....they lost months to mix and also MASTER a preproduction. It sucked very much because they didn't know at all what they were doing.

 

[Ollie_H]

Yeah, I understand, but we're hoping this stuff will last us a fair amount of time so hopefully in a few years we will be half decent haha. We aren't looking to put out professional quality stuff, but we want to improve our demos a bit. It was the first proper stuff I produced, the cones in the monitors were broken so they buzzed like hell, and there was something wrong with the DIs. I'm not going to say it came out good, but it wasn't terrible, it's certainly listenable if you like the music. At the mo we have no monitors, and a prototype low end m-audio interface of ebay that doesnt work quite right, and we're really keen to start recording stuff so we'd like to get some proper gear that will last us a while so we don't have to wrestle with workarounds and etc and can concentrate on recording.

We just want potential in the gear, with our current gear I doubt we could do noticeably better no matter how good at producing we were. With decent gear at least we can get better, even if it isn't pro standard. The better our demos the easier it is for us to promote ourselves and get gigs, and the more likely we'll have our shit together when we finally go to a proper studio.

 

[Damage, Inc.]

Recording yourselves is a great, free way to do preproduction, but if you want to have a quality-sounding demo, you're going to put quite some time into learning how to record and mix. I would suggest simply putting up a couple mics at practice and listening back to make sure everyone's parts are played properly and fit the overall picture.

What do you want to do with your demos? Do you want to sell them? Do you want to shop them to labels? You're probably better off paying someone for a day or two of studio time for 3-5 songs recorded and mixed.