what ian said. if your patient you can find a used cmc54 or 64 set for $2200, and there are a lot of good pres in the $500-$800 range to upgrade to (5fish, naiant,used v2,v3,mp2, etc)
if i was really budget limited, and wanted a good expandable setup i would get the following:
pair of schoeps cmr ($1000)
used mk4 ($1100)
used denecke AD20 or GP adc20 ($150)
used bit bucket ($200)
not $1500, but sub $2500 and pretty HQ complete setup