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Indy bands with outrageous equipment

#21
Over time, I've come to realize that by progressively upgrading gear, I'll have ended up spending considerably more money than if I'd just gone for the gusto right away.

That being said, here's my current bedroom amp and pedalboard (pedalboard not complete):
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I also have 6 basses and 4 guitars.

For the record, I used to play out a lot at venues that needed my low end support.
 
#25
Oh, let's see. My indie band has:

I have a custom bright red speaker cabinet from LDS
A custom bass guitar on the UPS truck
Lead guitar has a custom unique body guitar
Also a custom covered Mesa amp
Drummer has a complete custom built boutique drum kit
I have a buddy with a CNC laser cutter who is making us unique metal parts to decorate our guitars and amps, and mic stands

It is basically 100% douchebaggery, all-for-show, just so that we hit the stage with stuff that you can't get. It's part of the entertainment.

And we've got the money to do it, so why the heck not? Should we wait until we're on MTV to get awesome equipment? Our band is a bottomless money pit, and the only thing I would change (if I could) was how much money we make playing music.

I'm having an email conversation right now about spending $2000 on T-shirts that we might never sell. :rolleyes: But the shirts are cool, and people are gonna think we're cool for having them, and if spending $2000 makes people think we're cool, then by God we're spending another $2000.

It's complete douchebaggery, and we don't care. We think our music is top-notch, so now we're gonna do anything we can to get people to pay attention to us. It's a bottomless money pit and I love it.
 
#27
elavate7 said:
well i found out that being a musician is about how you look, its about how you sound. the audience has no idea how much your gear cost, all the know if it sounds good or not.
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Never said they'd know how much it cost.

You might want to look into groups like KISS, ZZ Top, Prince, U2, Pink Floyd, Alice Cooper, David Lee Roth, Mariah Carey, Lady Gaga, Slipknot, Muse, Les Claypool, Janet Jackson, Pharrell, Dethklok, the list goes on and on and on...

You can tell me that the audience loves those groups strictly because they sound good, but it doesn't mean I'll believe you.

There's a little more to a successful stage show than sounding good.
 
#28
Febs said:
A small, cranked guitar amp can sound much better than a big amp with the master volume on 1.
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that can be true. but if you want the audience, other band members and yourself to be able to hear it, you will need a bigger amp.

i have noticed that a lot of guys on this forum are jazz and blues players. Not that i have anything against those genres, it's just that they tend to be quieter, especially the drummer, which is what the rest of the band members have to adjust their volume around, as the drummer can't adjust theirs (in most cases:P)

in a rock or especially a metal band, the drums are much much louder than that of a jazz drummer. The drums are usually physically bigger, there are more cymbals and more going on drum wise. If you want to hear the bass AT ALL, you are going to need at least 300 to 400 watts RMS.

I have tried playing in metal / rock bands with small amps, and it just doesn't work.

And, so what if they want to use expensive gear. If someone spends 200 bucks on a nice jacket, do you criticise them because they are not a professional model?
 
#29
fractiouslowend said:
that can be true. but if you want the audience, other band members and yourself to be able to hear it, you will need a bigger amp.

i have noticed that a lot of guys on this forum are jazz and blues players. Not that i have anything against those genres, it's just that they tend to be quieter, especially the drummer, which is what the rest of the band members have to adjust their volume around, as the drummer can't adjust theirs (in most cases:P)

in a rock or especially a metal band, the drums are much much louder than that of a jazz drummer. The drums are usually physically bigger, there are more cymbals and more going on drum wise. If you want to hear the bass AT ALL, you are going to need at least 300 to 400 watts RMS.

I have tried playing in metal / rock bands with small amps, and it just doesn't work.

And, so what if they want to use expensive gear. If someone spends 200 bucks on a nice jacket, do you criticise them because they are not a professional model?
Click to expand...
You could try playing with a real PA system with good monitors.
 
#31
fractiouslowend said:
that can be true. but if you want the audience, other band members and yourself to be able to hear it, you will need a bigger amp.

...

If you want to hear the bass AT ALL, you are going to need at least 300 to 400 watts RMS.
Click to expand...

I wasn't talking about the bass:

Febs said:
A small, cranked guitar amp can sound much better than a big amp with the master volume on 1.
Click to expand...
 
#32
I'm kind of in the same boat as those guys :-)
I have a LMII head with an ampeg cab, a sandberg bass, a fender. My guitarist has a tube orange head and an orange big cab. My drummer has an expensive pearl drumkit. But we've never played big venues and will certainly never do. We just lik having good gear and good tones. Music being my only hobby, I can spend (a bit of) money for it ;-)
 
#33
Here's our PA rig that we used for backyard keg party last weekend....

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And of course you need something to drive it with:

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nothing like having enough gear for a small festival for a backyard keg party :)

-J
 
#34
Gear too big? What a strange concept. Only come to think about it, I heard that once from a guy who did acoustic gigs in coffeehouses, "I'm thinking of trading my 40-watt in for a 25, man."
I'm in agreement with the "be loud and look good" philosophy for rock shows. My guitarist has a full superlead stack, american fender, Gibson V, the keyboardist plays a Hammond/leslie and a Korg unit, I play my modified awesome basses through the 1200 with compressor and BBE in the rack etc., I personally think the PA is underpowered, even though theres a lot of it. The drummer plays a huge pearl set, and we have another one on standby. The other guitarist plays my Gibson explorer because he's too cheap to upgrade from his schecter and we won't let him take that to gigs. We get paid bupkis, we all have day jobs, and we spend our money on our stuff so we can kick out the jams on weekends.

People who complain about too much equipment probably own an ovation double-neck, like this one:

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and sing about lemon trees looking so pretty while sipping herbal tea during the breaks.
 
#37
My band KLUDDER is an unknown indy band and we have several high dollar amps(Mesa, Marshall, Ampeg) guitars (Real Gibson Les Pauls and PRS's), basses (I own about seven different Basses some exspensive some not), drums (3 really nice full sets, Pearl Fusions, Tama and DW w/ all top of the line A custom Ziljian Cymbals), several expensive mics, 3 different locations to jam ready to plug in and play, we own our own full on recording studio w/ alot of high dollar tube pre's and nice Mackie mixing board.... I'm not bragging by no means... we have all worked our asses off to own nice stuff.....
 

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