Yes, cards. I'm partial to AT853's but I've used Church audio CA11's and CA14's and they are a very good value.
Gear is important, but how you use it is more important. When I hear "set up at a corner of the bar with a friend" I think "you are going to get a lot of drunken chatter". I record in a lot of chatty bars.
My suggestion on improving your signal to noise ratio is to get closer to the music source. Since you are in the band, you can do what you want, when most of us can't. The average bar band has drums in the back, centered, a vocalist with a mic stand front and center, and guitar and bass off to the side. If that roughly describes you, your best bet might be to clamp a small set of mics on that vocalist's mic stand, about waist high. You might get a bit too much drums, but you won't get as chatter. The reason I mention this because now you will want to think about size of mics, and how you will mount them. I've done this a few times and it works pretty well.
A lot of musicians seem to like the Zoom H2. I haven't used one, but other people seem to like them. It's about the same size as the R09, but the mics built in are directional instead of omnis, so you can set it down with the mics pointing at the band and you will pick up more of what you want, and less of what you don't want. I think most almost everyone will say that the R09 has better electronics than the H2, and that's probably true, but it's also costs twice as much. The mics help determine the overall sound more than the recorder. If you have a budget of $500... don't spend $400 on the recorder and $100 on mics... spend $250 on mics, $50 on a battery box, and $200 on recorder.
I expect this is a really great set of mics for the money. The form factor might be kind of odd, but you can probably figure that out. Put AA betteries in them, get a Y cable to run into your recorder, and you should be all set.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Audio-Technica-AT855-Condensor-Microphones-Matched-Pair_W0QQitemZ320350370280QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item320350370280&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A570%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A0%7C293%3A7%7C294%3A50Just my 2 cents worth.
Topic: What's a good set-up for bar gigs? (Read 4755 times)