Goal tracking

I said I would not buy for more than USD500 of gear/stuff for my studio in 2013.

Boy is this gonna be hard! :-)

I needed a second mic stand so that I could track acoustic guitar right off the bat without having to circle around the room for 20 minutes setting everything up (see this post for why that's important). I bought it for a bit less than USD 70 including shipping. A nice Samson BL3, like the other one I have.

So that's USD430 left.

On my buy list, there currently is:

1. Addictive Drums by XLNAudio: my drum samples suck bad. Drums and bass are the most important things to get right in modern music. AD gets the job done for a very reasonable price. I have my sight set on the a nice bundle of AD + the Reel Machine ADPak with electro sounds
2. Valhalla Room reverb plugin: the guys over at http://www.homerecordingshow.com have been raving about how good this plugin is; why buy a reverb? I can't hear a bad EQ or a bad compressor (yet?) but I can definitely hear a bad reverb. Plus the guy who makes it (Sean Costello) is really cool.
3. A bass guitar; yes, I can't play the bass, but the sound I get with my crappy sample and the keyboard is plain horrible. A real bass, even a cheap one, either direct in or through my Line6 PocketPOD will definitely sound better

The AD bundle is $149 and Valhalla is $50 so that's $200 less. I'm left for $230 for *everything else*, including the bass. Yikes!

God forbid something breaks. Do I get a break? :-)