My vocal chain differs depending on who I'm recording and where I'm recording them. I bounce between the following:

Shure SM7B/SM57/Audio Technica AT4050/AT4047SV, A couple modified Apex 460's, Sennheiser ME64 and ME66 shotguns (mostly for dialog not singing), Sennheiser MD421-II, and a strange but effective favourite for dialogue in a Carol MUD-525. I have a pile more mics I've used, but most are for special purposes (lavalier etc) or for "effect" like my old crystal mics and the like.

Mic preamps built into either the RME Fireface 800, MOTU 828mk3, MOTU Traveler, Mackie Onyx 1640 Firewire, or my Zoom H4N.

Outboard preamps from a Digidesign Pre 8-channel (which are VERY clean up to 70db gain and very neutral), a Focusrite "Tone Factory" channel strip with EQ, comp, etc, preamps from a rebuilt/repurposed Altec 1692A mixer (lower gain but transformer input/output), channel strips from an old StarSound DynaMix console, and a bunch of custom built preamps I designed back in college.


Typically any EQ or compression I do "in the box" with whatever plugins I have available. The stock plugins in most DAWs are great - nobody needs to buy fancy plugins - really the only third party plugins I use are limiters and more "specialized" ones like dynamic EQ, multiband compressor, and those don't need to be used on everything.

I agree with Floyd about manual de-essing and removal of strange mouth sounds - it's much faster and more effective to manually edit things than to futz around with a plugin trying to get it to sound right. This is exactly how I feel on most editing tasks imho.

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