Songwriters of the MB with home recording setups: how do I get started?

Well, you'll need a decent mic and an xlr cable just as a baseline. You can do a lot of what you said with one decent condenser if you are truly looking to just put together demos. Hell, one dynamic mic can be enough in a pinch, though its certainly not ideal for vocals.

Looks like your little box has two of the 1/4"/xlr combo inputs, so you can go straight in to it with instruments if you choose, though that will clearly produce different sound than what you hear out of your amp.

ive done a bunch of mediocre demos with little tweaking and editing just by mic'ing everything and using headphones (I dont have studio monitors). sometimes i'll plug a bass in direct.

A zoom 8 track goes for about $250 on ebay and it's easy to use. It can only record 2 instruments at a time though but is awesome with built in effects and copy/paste features. Of course each track can be edited with low, mid and high EQ and parameter effect also. LOVE MY ZOOM 8 TRACK.

kingbob - Just remember that you need to decide if you are recording for just a demo or recording and then "mastering" to sell your product that you recorded. If you record it right you don't need to hire a mastering guy if you get your levels close to perfect/correct when you are doing the initial recording. Recording is one thing but "dumping" your recording to a source to make copies to give away or sell is another issue.

Sweetwater just had home studio monitors buy 1 get 1 free on presonus models. Nabbed a set for $250 for Christmas.

You're going to want a Shure SM57 Mic to record any guitars.

Especially metal.

Sounds like you already have a condenser mic for Vocals/ acoustic intruments.

Get a SM57 for amps/percussion. This mic can do it all.

The Mackie CR3 reference speakers would be a good start that's not too inexpensive

AKG K240 headphones are the headphones you'll find in every studio in the World.

Since your device only has two inputs, you'll need to get a small mixer if you want to record more tracks/Mics at once.

You would then just go left/right out of the mixer into your Audiobox.

Let me know if you have any questions

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Any recommendations for mixers? I was thinking I would need one if I was going to record drums in the future.

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I'm a fan of almost anything made by Mackie or Yamaha. From there it really depends on how many inputs you want and how much you want to spend. You may also want to get one with built in effects since wouldnt be able to, for example, put reverb on an individual snare mic once you send it to your Audiobox as a left/right mix.

I have the newest model Peavey 6 channel Mixer with FX and it is worth every bit of the 175$ I paid for it! Even recording your vocals it is great. For a keyboard, you can get yourself a cheap midi controller, and it will work perfect with Pre Sonus. I have thousands of hours recording on pre Sonus, and the midi controllers are easy to use. When doing your recording for vocals, experiment, but my best advice for main vocals for verses is to do 1 great take and clone and stack it, pan one of them to about 50 to the right and one to about 50 to the left, and keep one in the middle. You can add reverb to the main one or the outside set of vocals. On chorus, take a few stacked takes to make it sound fuller. That is a standard sound for now days music, and add whatever effects sound cool to you. Have some fun and experiment