First things first - check out Newbie Central in the Archival Info forum.

up to $2000, some elbow room to get this thread dirty with opinions

I'll stick to my standard answer... ADK A51TL's> warm or presence mod UA5 (pick your flavor)> JB3.  Around $1500 when you include a stand and some cables.  Not quite "compact", though.

audix 1290 > wmodUA-5 > your favorite recorder

switch the UA-5 for a sonosax/psp2/mp2 if you want something smaller

as per 2k give or take some, im surprised no one is saying 480s > ua-5 > jb3

480's > Warm UA-5 > JB3

ua-5 > ipod won't work, i think you'll need a laptop/pc inbetween the two, and then writing to the ipod in realtime might be too slow to get a decent recording.

you can do ua-5 > JB3 (via optical cable) tho if you mod or get a modded ua-5.

With a budget of $2000 and the patience to wait for deals on used gear to come along, you could have a really nice setup. If you have a computer, I'd pick up a JB3 and a Hosa 276 and patch into as many different mics/preamps as you could. These two plus an optical cable would be less than 300. Then pick up whatever set you like best.

If you wanted to get going sooner, spend some time listening to every available recording of the same show done on different setups. You said you like "jambands" so my guess would be that includes phish. If so, this band probably has the most recordings with the widest selection of microphones/preamps/AD. WSP and SCI probably come in a close 2nd. If you went with a used preamp and mic pair, you could easily do a w/p mod UA5 + AKG 81 or Neuman KM184 for $1400. An easy comparison of these two mics would be the 11-29-03 show since both of these mics were used with a MiniMe. That way you could listen to the difference in just the mics. Unfortunately, the minime is out of your price range if you paired it with the 480 or 184, but at least this would point out the difference in how these two sound. A used pair of these mics would be in the 900 range.

Other options in this range would be the ADK TLs, which are super popular on this board. These are large diameter mics, but offer variable pattern types. There have been some more recent phish recordings with these as well. A used pair of AKG 300s with both the 91 (card) and 93 (hypercard) caps would come in at a little less than 700. Plenty of recordings with these. Finally a new pair of Oktava MK012 from recording services or sound room would cost less than 700 for card,hyper & omni caps or less than 500 for a card/hyper set. If you went for one of the lower cost sets, you could get a used V3 for 1200 and a JB3 for 200, but by the time you throw in all the cables, batteries, etc you'd probably exceed your budget  by 200 or so.

If it were me, I'd go for a pair of 481s (900), a warm UA5 (450), a JB3 (200), another JB3 battery (50), a 15 foot pair of canare cables (50), a dayton audio optical cable with right angle adapters (20), a stand (50), some AT shock mounts (50), a t bar and thread adapters (20), batteries to power the UA5 (50) and a bag to lug it all around in (50). Add in another 110 for tax, S&H etc and you come in right at 2 bills. Good luck.