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Spending priorities

New band, what to spend $750 on?

  • Sub for the PA

    Votes: 18 27.3%
  • Pedals for bass magic

    Votes: 5 7.6%
  • Tenor guitar for the singer

    Votes: 2 3.0%
  • Marketing

    Votes: 12 18.2%
  • Me

    Votes: 16 24.2%
  • Carrots

    Votes: 13 19.7%

  • Total voters
    66
of those options, i would say the PA sub should be the priority. but i agree with the others who've stated that it shouldn't be your financial burden alone. especially this early in the game. if the singer wants a guitar she can buy one, or maybe borrow some gear from your drummer if he is generous enough. marketing is always good but again, that cost should be evenly split among the band members.

pedals and you is always fine in my book. it's your money to spend the way you want it. if it keeps things fresh and fun or adds a new dimension to your music, that's a positive. of course by that same logic, you are free to personally invest as much as you'd like into your band - just give every decision careful consideration and make sure it's worth it to you.

funny you mentioned the mandolin chords. some friends of my band in another local band have a female singer who plays an electric mandolin as their lead instrument. pretty cool
 
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Don't buy gear for other people or for the "band". Buy PA equipment and allow the band to use it. If a guitarist doesn't have a rig then he's not good enough to be in your group. Don't buy icing for the cake (pedals, etc) before you have eggs and four.

+1

Whatever you buy, you own. If the band starts heading towards Splitsville, you walk away with the gear. That being said, I'd go for the sub. If you can find a used JBL, that would be where I'd start. Otherwise QSC, Carvin, etc... make decent stuff as long as you're not trying to loosen the foundation.
 
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Don't buy gear for other people or for the "band". Buy PA equipment and allow the band to use it. If a guitarist doesn't have a rig then he's not good enough to be in your group. Don't buy icing for the cake (pedals, etc) before you have eggs and four.

Totally valid. Certainly, anything I buy would be my property, I can keep that clear. To clarify, there's a bit of a history here; the drummer and singer and I were in a prior band together, and the drummer was the one who made the investment to buy a PA for the band to use then. That group folded after maybe a dozen or fifteen gigs. I don't feel he was entirely hung up to dry, since of course he could always sell the stuff and recoup part or all of his investment, but if there's a piece of the PA missing (like a sub) I don't feel right about going and telling him he has to go and spend more money. I'd rather buy it myself, have it be my contribution to the band's setup, and if this band folds, own it and be able to sell it or use it for other projects (I don't own a full PA but do have some of the other components towards one).

Any additional guitarist we recruit (I have a guy interested) would of course need to provide his own gear. The tenor guitar thing is 1) an instrument I'm curious about for my own sake, having played mandolin for years before taking up bass, and 2) something I'm thinking about wooing the singer into taking up. No way she's going to go dropping $1000 on an instrument and amp for a setup on an instrument she's never played before, but I'm thinking if I had one, introduced her to it and taught her to play, it might help flesh out the sound and give us another option. If it didn't take, I'd own a tenor guitar I wanted anyway, and if it did, she could either buy it off me to be her own, or buy one herself, at the stage she becomes comfortable with it.
 
Shouldn't members of the new band contribute equally to any community gear such as PA equipment (subs, power amps, etc)?

To me your money is for your bass rig which may require an upgrade if you don't have PA support everywhere you go.

To my mind it's better not to have community gear. The drummer owns the existing PA, if the band doesn't work out it's his to use in other projects or sell. He doesn't own a sub, if I bought one we'd plug it into his system and, again, if the band didn't work out it would be mine to use in other projects or sell. Saves hassle trying to sort out everyone's "share" if people leave, get fired, or the whole thing breaks up. Marketing, on the other hand, I can see everyone chipping in for, since it benefits the whole and is ephemeral.
 
To my mind it's better not to have community gear. The drummer owns the existing PA, if the band doesn't work out it's his to use in other projects or sell. He doesn't own a sub, if I bought one we'd plug it into his system and, again, if the band didn't work out it would be mine to use in other projects or sell. Saves hassle trying to sort out everyone's "share" if people leave, get fired, or the whole thing breaks up. Marketing, on the other hand, I can see everyone chipping in for, since it benefits the whole and is ephemeral.
I may want to rethink my earlier contribution. Perhaps marketing is a shared expense. The sub would be a "nice to have" item. I know I built my sound system a little at a time. My band uses it for live performances. We use the lead guitar's system for rehearsal at his studio. I agree communal gear is always a bad idea. It makes a band breakup even nastier than it has to be.
In my mind, it breaks down to how you want to form the business of the band. If you are going to be the BL and take on those headaches, the perhaps the money should be the seed money for the business. That would mean, however, that you would take a double cut of the bookings and you would be responsible for the marketing and merch as well as the bookings.
Or, perhaps if you want to be a "democratic" band, get everyone to agree that you will front the marketing money that will come off the top to pay you back before anyone gets any money.
 
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Invest in triple-A rated municipal bonds until real needs present themselves.

BTW OP, I like your avatar. Who is that angry looking, sword wielding critter?

Ha ha thank you. That's Cerebus the Aardvark. Brilliant comic, very weird. Well, before it got ultra-weird. But the 70s and 80s stuff is great.
 
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It's your money, so I voted "Me".

Do you have room to store subs, and a use for them outside of this new band? If I spend any money on equipment, it's MY equipment. It aint staying with the band if things don't work out, so it should be useful to ME and have a place to live at my house.

My .02