recording strips

I am bored to death of synthesizers and am starting to record a lot of acoustic sounds into my sampler then using the waveforms as oscillators
and filtering them and stuff. I was wondering if anyone has done a lot of acoustic recording and what recording strip they used if any , I have a couple of excellent mikes but would love a nice recording channel but most of the ones i have looked at have been very very expensive, well over a thousand pounds and i was wondering about cheaper alternatives.................i may also want to record some vocals and other tones, so sound quality is paramount ?

We are doing some pop at the moment, well trying to anyway, and we had a vocal quality issue so we've gone and got a Microtech microphone and a DAV Electronics preamp (broadhurst gardens model), sounds clean as anything.

You can talk to keith at kmraudio (www.kmraudio.com), the DAV cost about 400-500 quid and the Microphone was about six I think, but there are cheaper options, but the set up we had before which can't have cost more than about 400 quid in total was a rode NT something and a TLA preamp. But compared to the new stuff the TLA and Rode sound distorted.

I'm a fan of mic-pre's without any features on, if you want something with EQs and Limiters then the DAV is no good to you but there are loads of them, thoughly recommend giving Keith or Nicki a call at KMR...

thanx for the reply , very helpful, top man you are.