PM me an email and I'll send you a song or 2 I did on a 4 track cassette...
2 things any recording needs: a Shure SM57 and a compressor.
I had/have a Mackie 16 ch mixer, a Boss DR550 drum machine, 1 SM57, 1 cheap Audio-Technica M4000, an Alesis nano-compressor, and a Yamaha 4 track...
Once I got the tracks on the PC (after 7 years on tape) you can do amazing things with recording and mixing software.
A familiar AH player used a song of mine in his youtube movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHg0d4qfx7YI don't think it's that bad for $1500 in hardware and a bit of software for the strings and mixing (remember those guitar tracks and the bass line were laid down on tape 7+ years ago) though I did one acoustic overdub at the end with a $99 Sears guitar and double mic mixed together, 1 in the sound hole, 1 5" up the fretboard.