The worst sessions I've ever done were for flat rates... Musicians will do a horrible job and drag things out endlessly if the clock isn't on. That's not a theory, that's experience... ...and there's most certainly a shortage of good bass players in my town. Bear in mind, I'm coming from a metal background & things are very structured. Jazz improv is something completely different.

Totally see the "drag out endlessly" possibility

Yes, flat rates SUCK. I charge for load-in/setup time too. Bands grumble at this but you can't have dudes standing around smoking and talking about how awesome it's going to sound, for hours, because they will if you let them. The one thing I haven't yet been able to successfully charge for is tuning instruments for band members. I routinely have to spend a couple hours getting drums in tune, finding squeaks/buzzes or intonating guitars/bass for folks who have decent equipment but have never had it set up or really learned how to do basic maintenance. Either that or I make them leave that stuff at the door and use the house equipment. More often than not, the house drums and bass guitar rigs get used.

And NO you can't just record in a "home" studio, unless you want it to sound like a home studio recording. I've spent huge amounts of money creating and tuning a sound room to get it right. You just can't get that in a bedroom with a digi001 or other guitar center gadget. You might be able to get 75% of the sound but that last 25% is where you spend the money to make it polished. This is one of those things where folks are so proud of what they've done (it's like HEY LOOK, I CAN RECORD LIKE A PRO!!!!111) that they can't see the flaws and you have an uphill battle in trying to explain that you aren't going to get the 1073/1176/LA2A sounds with a Firepod and a plug-in no matter what the marketing says.

@oznimbus Nice chain. I recently had a band come in where the singer had a really odd voice, very gutteral voice with a lot of raspy harmonics. He kept telling me that I would have a really hard time with his voice because he had always had problems with recording. Turns out he had only recorded in "home" studios. He was really worried about it because he had never really paid for studio time before and was worried that he would pay for a lot of time and no better results. He really let on that he didn't trust what I was promising even though I kept trying to re-assure him that it would be OK. I finally had to re-arrange the schedule to do some scratch vocals with him to gain his trust. I setup a couple mics, a Gefell, a ribbon and a modified tube mic and ran it through an API312 into an 1176. The tracks ended up so nice and rich that i thought he was going to cry. We ended up using a modified Apex460 (C12 clone) with a real C12 capsule for everything. He was so happy that he paid me to build him a mic just like mine so he could take it everywhere he went to record.

Here's part two: Close ups are done with a Kowa 16s and Helios combo.

@OzNimbus - I LOL'd