Okay, I want to track an acoustic guitar, a mandolin, a didgeridoo, male and female vocals, possibly some ambient spaces (water, birds, traffic...), and banging on pots and pans.
Not all at once: overdubbing is my route.
I have a Tascam US-122mkII with its preamps, and just let it be known that I'll be tracking either on headphones or a stereo system, and "mixing" on said stereo system (if I ever need real mixing done, I'll wait until I can afford a couple hundred a track, and then beg the services of EH or someone like that.... lawl).
With all that out of the way: I want to buy my first real mic.
With emphasis on "my" and "real". My friend has this TS-ending mic that came with his consumer keyboard, which wasn't that bad I guess. It's not mine tho
. Recently, upon request for "any mics maybe you don't use", my pastor gave me this mic that had been sitting in the pulpit 4ever, which "didn't work with the sound system". I got results out of that thing by turning up the gain on my AI all the way, and then using noise removal, and then EQ'ing and compressing and boosting and adding reverb until you could almost sort of here it by turning the speakers way up. 
Okay, so I want to buy a mic (or have one gifted to me, lawl). I just want ONE mic to hopefully do everything that I mentioned way up at the top of the post, without needing any more gear to make it work. My budget is right around $100. I think I've got it down to two contestants: the SM57 Dynamic and the Audio-Technica AT2020 Condenser. I lean toward the 2020 because I've read that with Phantom Power you need less gain, and therefore it may sound better than a dynamic on budget pre's. Also the vocals are the most important to me, followed by acoustic instruments, with percussion and amp-micing being least important.
After I buy my midi controller and the mic, I don't expect to spend any more on music gear for a very long time, as I'm in my HS senior year and don't plan to make a heck of a lot of time for my beloved hobby in college or beyond... probably.
Thoughts?
