JPF Home Page Forums Musician Gear and Techniques Microphone and Vocalist Forum choosing a mic

Jacquee, you may be surprised how well your present mic will work in a live situation. Usually, if it's good for recording it's going to work live. There are always exceptions so don't take it as gospel.
If you're trying to put a band together you're going to have all sorts of issues if you depend on everyone having a piece of the gear needs, other than their required instruments, amps, appropriate cables and possibly a preferred microphone. Though it's costly as hell you're better off owning all the PA gear. What happens when Rock God Guitar Player decides on greener pastures and takes his gear with him? Yeah, you're out of luck or renting. (That, by the way, it's not a bad way to start out and give you the option to test gear in real life situations without the huge purchase outlay.)
IMO, a four piece band with mic'd drums will require at least 12 to 16 channels and more won't hurt. Main amps and monitor amps as well as loudspeakers for both FOH and stage. How many depends on budget and actual needs, along with venue size. You'll also need EQs, compressors and other miscellaneous gear, cables, stands, hauling carts, and on and on.
You sure you want to do this????
I do solo work as my primary gigging but do run sound for a good friend. His band is a four piece, two guitars, bass, and drums. It happens the he and one other band member own the PS system. That only works because they've been friends for many years and get along through thick and thin. Normally 3 vocals, 3 amps and drums are mic'd and sometimes we'll do co-gigs where I'll do sets between theirs. Then I'll have additional vocal and guitar channels. Add in a channel for talk back and we're pretty full with the channels we have. We run a 16 channel 1200 watt powered mixer, split between FOH and stage monitors. Many gigs are outdoors and it's borderline in many cases though we get by and still sound good. Some places it's overkill but those are pretty small places. I'd like to see them come up with an additional stage monitor amp setup to leave the full amp power available for FOH but I think that's a pipe dream.
So, I consider what we have the bare minimum for a four piece. You'll need more for a five piece and power should really be at least double. You can always turn down without hurting things but if you are limited in power and try to go higher you run a very good chance of clipping an amp and that's not good for the amp, nor the loudspeakers.
Once you start looking into it in depth I think you'll find the microphones are going to be a small part of the picture, though still important. Don't skimp on the quality of cables, stands and so on either. You'll regret it the first time one fails and always have backups.
Good luck.