Dave, I am sooooooo relieved to hear you made that decision. I've followed the threads where you've talked about the 102 and 103 and cringed thinking you might actually do that. I owned two 103's and sold them straight away. Harsh and strident to my ears, a trait common with the 102. Good choice my friend!

Also, if you're looking for a warm sonically pleasing vocal mic you could do much worse than an AT 4060 tube mic. I think AT mics are extremely underrated. I have a pair of 4033's and a pair of 4041's which get used exclusively for stereo miking my Martin HD 28  and other acoustic instruments.

And I just picked up a new AEA R84 long ribbon which I'm loving on some female vocals. I'm running it through a LaChappell 583 tube preamp and it drips velvet!

Other mics include:

2x SM81's
3x Beta 98's (drums)
Beta 52
2x Cascade Fatheads Ribbons
2x CAD E100's
1x Octava ML 52 Ribbon modded by Micheal Joly
1x Beta 91
1x EV RE20
1x Shure Sm 27
Several 57's

As far as preamps, I currently have:

Dav BG-1 2 channel
2x Neve 1073 LB's
2x A Designs P-1's
1x Purple Biz MK
1x Brent Averill API with a vintage 2520 opamp
1x OSA MPC-1
2x Great River 500NV
1x LaChappell 583s

I have a pair of Shadow Hills Mono Gama's on the way.

However, I run a commercial operation and have a much great need for a larger selection of mics and preamps.

For a home studio a couple of Great River pres can carry you a long way. They can be clean as a whistle or you can overdrive the output stage to get some very sweet harmonic distortion. A great all-rounder!

I've always felt that even a small home studio should have higher quality gear even if in small amounts. Because if it's crap going in, it'll be crap when it squirts out the black boxes.

My 2¢...

Earl

I've always felt that even a small home studio should have higher quality gear even if in small amounts. Because if it's crap going in, it'll be crap when it squirts out the black boxes.

 
I am definitely making a turn toward that direction.  My vision is a small-moderate amount of quality gear and very personalized attention.  Who is going to be impressed with "Yeah, but I have a ton of cheap gear in a little room."  If I can get the lead vocalist to sound better than they've ever heard themselves before, I've got a repeat customer.  I'm already getting that kind of feedback from the people I have recorded since I stepped up my game preamp-wise.  So, why compromise what's going in the box in the very first step in the signal chain?
 
BTW: Impressed with your gear list.

For a "home studio" the better the gear the better off you are.  Most of us at home aren't tracking drums often or orchestras.  It is better to use a real studio for that.  But for any acoustics we do record, we need to the best quality we can afford.  One really good channel strip can get us one really good track at a time recording.

@

I am with the higher quality but fewer pieces of hardware crowd. 3 preamps here, Portico 5012 (x2) and a Brick for DI. Leaving plugins behind and replacing them with a few good pieces i.e 1176 & LA2A, Portico 5043, 160x. The next challenge is to leave a few of the lo end reverb units behind and get either a Lexicon or Bricasti. Sold off all my low end hardware and moving to a few solid high end pieces. Running Lynx converters.

Bricasti M7!

Dave: Congratulations on getting the U87....you'll thank yourself many times over , as will your clients. The U87 will be a great match with your UA710

Gaffpro


Dave: Congratulations on getting the U87....you'll thank yourself many times over , as will your clients. The U87 will be a great match with your UA710

Hopefully, it will work well with the Avalon 737 as well. 

Thanks all for the attention (and helpful comments) that the thread is getting.

I did the 103 thing for awhile. Now I am using the TLM49 which is good. Next year I will make the U87 jump to see how much more that brings. I just upgraded to a PX79 MB and i7 3930k chip. That was my big spend for this year. Close to a grand but 12 threads on 6 cores is like taking the space shuttle to Wendy's for a burger. Latency is .72ms at 32 buffers. HooRa!

My precious.

Awesome. Enjoy.