Makes no sense to buy all this nice equipment and put it in a bag that is less than optimal for the task at hand.
Thanks to all who have kept me on the right path.
Hey jim1274, good for you! So now that you've got all of your stuff ordered for the most part, here's a couple more words of wisdom.
Set it all up before the gig and pretend that you're at the show. What I suggest is to set your stand up in front of your stereo and pretend the speakers are the PA. Simulate the club by turning the lights out. This will cause you not to forget your flashlight! Then set everything up and run the sound through your recorder for awhile. Turn it on and off. Get familiar with the controls on the recorder in the dark. Get familiar with which switches turn the recorders backlight on and off, without aid of a flashlight.
IMPORTANT: Then test to make sure you've recorded samples properly and they came through fine in your recording chain. The best way to do this is to be anal and take the practice sound bites all the way to your software...Audition or whatever.
The idea is to learn these couple of errors that you might make in your living room, not at the gig when it's too late to fix them. Also, understand that just because you see levels peaking at the right spots on the meters, doesn't always mean that you're getting good sound...although it's usually the case. But knowing your gear a little bit ahead of time by practicing can help increase your confidence level that you're getting the goods during the show.
One caution...you are recording in 24bit so you don't need to push your levels at all. A common mistake in the last two or three years is for people to push their levels way up towards the red zone because that's what we did in the old days. With 24bit recorders, you don't have to do that because the bit depth captures the sound with sufficient resolution that you really can leave TONS of headroom and bump the levels later in post and retain 100% of the sound. This subject is discussed ad nauseum on these forums and this is one subject that's not debated...leave lots of headroom in 24bit so that you never have to worry about coming close to clipping. (You could actualy prove this to yourself if you wanted...when practicing, simply conduct a sample in your living room by running your levels through range from low to high and then adjust/normalize the levels in post to see how the fidelity of the end product is affected...chances are you won't hear much, if any, difference...that is until your recorder levels are so high that you overload the internal preamps on the recorder.)
If you practice even just a little bit, I promise you that you'll eliminate one or two screwed up recordings along the way. As simple as this all seems when you have it all laid out in front of you before the gig, if you don't practice with it, Murphy definitely _WILL_ show up and mess with you. It's a taperssection law!
So, what I guess I'm suggesting is that when you get out to the gig and discover something that you did wrong or something that you need to learn or ask about, don't feel alone because literally 100% of us on this list have gone through the same thing and if there's a mistake that can be made a) you'll make it, and b) we've all done it before you.
So mainly have fun and if you can practice a little ahead of time and it will pay off for you.