>"we still use e.g. the same microphones as back then, and they're still expensive"
Good microphones were almost prohibitively expensive in the old days. Today you can buy something like an SM57 for €100, and that's normal retail price, no special offers or anything. Second-hand, they're usually less than half that.
Decent acoustic guitars can be had for less than €200, brand new. Sure that won't be a fancy name-brand guitar, but it'll sound good and play well.
All kinds of great outboard gear like the FMR Really Nice Compressor is €200, and it's one hell of a piece of gear, even at twice that price. Combine with an inexpensive mixer with decent preamps, and you're already well on your way. Yes, even Behringer is decent these days.
And you can run a pro-grade DAW like Reaper on an ordinary run-of-the-mill PC. An audio interface with a good amount of input channels is going to cost a bit, but if you're OK recording one or two tracks at a time, a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 is €120. And even inexpensive studio monitors have astoundingly good sound quality, compared to what people used to swear by.
Good microphones were almost prohibitively expensive in the old days. Today you can buy something like an SM57 for €100, and that's normal retail price, no special offers or anything. Second-hand, they're usually less than half that.
Decent acoustic guitars can be had for less than €200, brand new. Sure that won't be a fancy name-brand guitar, but it'll sound good and play well.
All kinds of great outboard gear like the FMR Really Nice Compressor is €200, and it's one hell of a piece of gear, even at twice that price. Combine with an inexpensive mixer with decent preamps, and you're already well on your way. Yes, even Behringer is decent these days.
And you can run a pro-grade DAW like Reaper on an ordinary run-of-the-mill PC. An audio interface with a good amount of input channels is going to cost a bit, but if you're OK recording one or two tracks at a time, a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 is €120. And even inexpensive studio monitors have astoundingly good sound quality, compared to what people used to swear by.
You can get really far on a budget nowadays.