ty for your message

lol – that’s a solid enough deck at the price! needed to check cos you can spend many thousands of pounds(!) on a single condenser..i’d recommend something like the rv6 on this page – http://www.red5audio.com/acatalog/Condensor_Mics.html
but i see you can get it on ebay in a bundle with a pad, headphones(prob not so good) and a couple of other bits. it needs a 48v phantom power supply which i THINK your deck has but check it’s compatibility otherwise you’ll need an external one…you can spend less however and depending on how your lad records(i really don’t know that software!) will depend on whether it’s too much..still, this is a good enough mic to stand an upgrade elsewhere in his system – either mixer deck or soundcard(m-audio does some seriously yummy kit!)

other things you might want to consider are sound-absorbing panels which, to be honest, you can build yourself

here’s a link if you like a bit of diy –

http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=5930

and save a fortune – studio kit cost omg cash!…or, sit down for this one, upgrade the deck to something like this-

http://www.aandcaudio.co.uk/Soundcraft-Spirit-SX-Audio-Mixer-pid965.htm

i very rarely record external sources so all my investment has been in software that should cost several thousand(check your messages to see why it didn’t =)) and i only take a digital source from my pc and deal with that externally using dacs and amps i made/modified myself…if i was recording external sources i’d go m-audio and get one of these s/hand –

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/ProjectMixIO-main.html

but you can see how quickly things get out of hand!
hope that’s a start for you
=)
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