Thanks for the suggestions. Sadly, taking the recording straight off the PA isn't an option, because of how we're set up. And since I'm sound man, guitarist, bassist and vocalist as well (depending on time of evening), there isn't anyone spare to watch a separate mixer - and we don't really have the funds to get one either, unfortunately.

Only the vocals and guitars go through the mixer, and the guitars only go through it so that we can hear them on the foldback, plus a little extra on the PA to carry over people's heads. We both have good enough guitar amps that we don't need much extra reinforcement, and putting them entirely through the PA would lose some of the amp "character". The bass has its own amp as well - it doesn't need to go through the PA because bass carries well on its own (and tends to overload PA speakers anyway), and for the same reason we don't need it on foldback. And drums are loud enough as they are.

So neither the foldback output nor the PA output really bear much resemblance to the overall sound as it hits the outside world. It's a bummer, or we could just have recorded off one of those and had an easy life... :-/

We're not too bothered about perfect stereo or anything like that! :-) The main reason I thought stereo would help would be to get the sound from the guitar/bass amps properly - two of us have a guitar and bass each and swap roles depending on songs, and of course we have to put our amps on opposite sides of the drumkit, where we're standing. So a directional mic is probably going to pick up one better than the other. A pair of mics pointing both ways seems more likely to pick up evenly. Or would a single mic pointing straight ahead pick up both fairly well? (and also not pick up the drumkit at high volumes, since it'd now be pointing straight at it?)

If your basic 58 (or pair thereof) will do the job OK, I'll give it a try. I was wondering though if there was anything that would do a better job (or simpler, or more accurate reproduction) than that?

Graham.