To record any acoustic instruments, such as acoustic guitar, piano, wind instruments, drums, or voice, you'll need some microphones to pick up sounds and convert them to electric signals. While all microphones do basically the same thing, not every microphone is right for every purpose. Just pick up a music catalog and look through the microphone section, and you'll see many shapes, sizes, brands.

If you're the only one recording (you are working alone and playing all the instruments), you should have one microphone for every instrument you want to record. You can always buy more at a later time if you need to. If you plan on having groups record live or making some money from your studio, you'll want a wide selection of microphones to cover any situation that comes up. But how do you know what you need?