moonbass

It's a weird world! NS10s are a type of monitor speaker that have been considered a standard in mixing for many many years despite being widely considered to sound horrible! The reasoning being that if you can make a track sound good on them then it will sound good anywhere. (The other reason is that they were so widely used that mixers knew what they would sound like.) They're not made anymore but the principle still remains that it's usually best to mix in a very flat or even harsh environment which will encourage you to add excitement or smoothness to the mix. A good example of this would be mixing at quite low volumes. If you mix at high volume you can be fooled into thinking your mix sounds better than it actually does due to the automatic 'smiley face' eq that your ears perceive at higher volumes. I think another area frequently overlooked in home studios is the bass response of monitors. Certainly in my room I tend to end up overdoing the bass as I don't have a sub, and then when I play a mix in the car the bass is overwhelming.

It depends a lot on what sort of sound you want. I suspect nearly every microphone ha been used at some point to get a workable cab tone. If you wanted a gritty rock tone then an SM57 might work. Any large diaphragm condenser would give a nice natural full tone. A lot of people end up using a kick drum mic, but an equal amount of people think this puts all the humps in wrong frequencies. What's your budget?

What studio monitors do you use? And how/where do you have them set up? I used to use my hifi before I could afford decent studio monitors, and the results were fine, but good monitors well set up, and ones that you know how they relate to the finished product are better. You do have to reference the finished product on various systems (hifi, car stereo, iphone etc) and this might be the phenomenon you are referring to. I have to say, I increasingly use decent headphones for mixing now for convenience though.

I use this DI box. Cheap and cheerful. Avoids funny hums and means you can use longer cables to the desk. Less problematic volume issues out of powerful keyboards or weedy acoustic instruments. Can be powered with phantom power out of most desks. http://www.thomann.de/gb/art_xdirect.htm

Ah, do you have an idea of your total budget?

Might help to know what the PA/monitoring setup is to give you appropriate mic suggestions. From bitter experience this is not a cheap process!

MXR 10 band graphic works brilliantly for me. I'd put it before the fuzz.