Whether you’re a gigging musician or you just prefer to rock out in your living room, music can get expensive. If you start to wander down this path, here are some of the ways you might end up spending money:
- Gear
- Recording1
- Mixing
- Mastering
- Distribution
- Copyrights
- Domain/Webhosting
- Payments to Other Musicians2
- Advertising/Promotion
- Bulk Merch Purchases3
- Gas4
This is light-years away from being an all-inclusive list, but this post is really going to focus on the first item: Gear.
I’m going to be completely honest with you. I love buying gear. Not just instruments, but all of it. I got excited the last time I bought new patch cables for my pedalboard, for crying out loud.5 I like things that make my life a little bit easier, be it while I’m actively performing, loading in/out, setting up, or tearing down. Most importantly, though, I like things that sound good.
Gear, though, isn’t cheap. Let’s say you book a gig at a local bar. They don’t have a PA, so you have to provide your own sound. Let’s assume you sing and play the guitar. At minimum, you’ll need a microphone, an XLR cable for the mic, a mic stand, your guitar, an instrument cable, a guitar stand, speakers, speaker cables, and a mixer. All of that together can get well into the thousands of dollars, and, like I said, that’s at minimum, so it doesn’t include guitar pedals, patch cables, a cable to get from your pedalboard to the mixer, a monitor, a cable for the monitor, a power strip, or anything else you want or need to play your music the way you want to play it.
See what I’m saying? It’s a lot.6
Most of us who run from venue to venue playing music for people night after night do it because, in a way, we have to. We can’t not do it.7 So, we boldly go, gigging with the best gear we can manage to get our hands on within the limits of our budget.
This leads to a debate I’ve heard for a long time. Go to any musician message board and you’ll find at least one thread that features an argument about whether or not you need expensive “pro” gear to be a gigging musician or not. As is usually the case in online discussions, there isn’t a lot of nuance, but I think the answer to the question “Do you need professional gear to be a gigging musician?” absolutely cannot be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.”
As musicians, we deal in sound. Everything else is secondary. We work very hard on our craft and then step on stage, or into the studio, to share what we’ve done with others. We’ve created not only the songs themselves, but also an overall sound that defines us as artists. We have an idea in our head of what we want our work to sound like, and the ultimate goal is to present that work in such a way as to honor our artistic vision.
So, my answer to the question of whether you need expensive, pro gear to be a gigging musician is: As long as what is reaching your audience sounds the way you want it to, it doesn’t matter how you got there.
I’ve heard people play incredibly expensive guitars on stage and they sounded incredible. I’ve heard people step on stage with old guitars found at pawn shops and they sounded incredible, too. I’m not saying that an old pawn shop guitar is going to be as clear, balanced, and full as a Taylor or Martin, but, for some artists, the way that old, beat-up pawn shop guitar plays contributes to the overall sound they’re going for. It works. They’re satisfied with it. It doesn’t matter what you or I think about it.
Here’s the rub, though. If you have some cheap gear that you managed to get your hands on that doesn’t really sound the way you want it to, it’s worth finding ways to improve it, incrementally, as best you can.
You can be the best singer around, but if the sound of your voice coming out of your PA is muffled or staticky, it doesn’t matter what your range is or how well you can hit those runs, because people aren’t really going to get the full impact of the work you’re doing. Your audience will be hearing static and muffled vocals, burying those lyrics on which you worked so hard underneath all that noise as well. Further, you can be a prodigy guitarist who has spent years honing your craft, but if you’re playing on a cheap guitar that’s hard to play or sounds thin, or if your amplifier isn’t up to the job, the audience isn’t really going to get to appreciate the full experience of your playing.
If you don’t like what’s coming through the speakers, you owe it to yourself as an artist to improve it. I’m not recommending bankruptcy in the interest of buying the best gear around, but you can, at the very least, take steps to find equipment that more effectively does what you need it to do, and acquire it one piece at a time.
I’ve had several PA systems throughout the years, from hand-me-down systems, makeshift Frankenstein systems, and one that I bought really cheap at a certain big box musical instrument store a couple of decades ago.8 Most of them didn’t sound great, either because they simply weren’t that great to begin with or they were just old and beat-up.
This limited my ability to play out, as what was coming through the speakers really didn’t sound good, and I wasn’t comfortable with my music sounding like that. As a result, I started focusing more on venues that had their own PA systems, which led to a lot of lost opportunities. I knew I needed to get my hands on a decent PA so that I could go play my songs the way I want them to sound in more places and with fewer limitations.
Finally, seven or eight years ago, I purchased a Bose L1 system. It’s not a cheap piece of equipment by any stretch, but it’s easy to transport, has a small footprint, and, most importantly, it sounds amazing. I’ve played hundreds of gigs with it and, as far as the price tag goes, it’s paid for itself many times over.9
The features, convenience, and quality of this PA have made an incalculable difference to me as a gigging musician. It’s opened doors for me, enabling me to play regularly and in a greater selection of venues. Also, the features and overall convenience of it have facilitated my creativity in a lot of ways.10
Again, I’m not recommending you break the bank to get something that you really can’t afford, but I would encourage you to start to piece together an equipment ecosystem that allows you to create in such a way as to honor the integrity of your art.
People who are just starting out on the guitar will often ask me what kind of guitar to get. Most folks, understandably, don’t want to spend a lot of money on something that they may possibly lose interest in. Will a cheap starter kit guitar be good enough if you’re learning how to play?
The answer to this question is, unfortunately, probably not.
A cheap guitar can actually hinder your ability to learn. If a guitar is hard to play, as a lot of the cheaper “kit” guitars are, you’re more likely to get discouraged and quit before you get any traction. Learning how to play the guitar is challenging enough: your fingers are doing things they aren’t used to doing, both hands are doing different things simultaneously, and, until you build up some callouses, it hurts. It’s easy to get dispirited and lock the thing back in its case permanently if you’re learning how to play on a nice guitar, let alone if the guitar you’re using is working against you.
Please note that I’m not saying that a brand-new student guitarist needs to go out and spend a couple thousand dollars on a guitar. I am saying, though, that there are definitely quality guitars for beginners that won’t empty your wallet or get in the way of your development. They just cost a little more than a bargain-priced guitar-in-a-box.
A guitar can’t suddenly make you a better guitar player anymore than those Air Jordans I had as a kid could make me jump higher. You still have to do the work and practice.11 A cheap guitar, though, can absolutely get in the way of your playing and impede your ability to learn.
A good guitar can make you sound better, though. I played a Fender Catalina for more than 20 years. I had a pickup installed in it back in the late 90s and I took that guitar everywhere. It played nicely and saw a ton of action.
At some point, though, I realized that it just wasn’t capable of creating the sound that I wanted. It was getting older, I was gigging more, and I knew it was time to upgrade. I played a Taylor 526ce at Tobias Music in Downers Grove, IL back in 2016 and fell in love with it, but I resigned myself to the fact that it was out of my price range. My wife, Lara, was there when I played that guitar for the first time. She, subsequently, snuck around behind my back and, in collusion with some friends and family, surprised me with it a couple of months later.
As sentimental as I feel towards my old Catalina, the Taylor sounds infinitely better, plugged in or not. I feel like the sound I’m getting out of the Taylor, whether I’m playing live or recording, is closer to what I hear in my head than what I was getting out of the Catalina. It inspires me to pick it up and play it, because I love the way it makes songs sound.
That’s the point of this post, really. If you love the sound your ecosystem of equipment is producing, it doesn’t matter how you got there. If you don’t, take steps to get to the point where you do. It doesn’t have to be all at once. Incremental improvements can make a big difference.
My problem with the way the debate about gear quality is generally conducted online is the assumption that someone has the right answer for everybody else.12 It’s my opinion that you need to answer the question for yourself. I can’t decide that for you, and some random dude on the Internet definitely can’t decide that for you13.
Your music is yours. It’s your art. If you like the way your gear makes it sound, that’s ultimately the most important thing. If you don’t like the way it sounds, though, start upgrading. Do it in pieces.
The bottom line is this: don’t let anybody convince you that you have to spend thousands of dollars on gear to be a “professional” musician. It simply isn’t true. However, sub-par gear can certainly hinder you in several different ways. That’s the nuance missing from the debate. The answer changes from artist to artist.
OK, your turn.
Drop your thoughts on the matter in the comments here or hit me up on social media. I’m not trying to encourage some stupid Internet fight, though, so be cool. Everybody’s opinion is welcome here14.
- Even if you record at home, which I’ve done for a couple of my tunes, you still need the proper equipment and software, which isn’t cheap. ↩︎
- If you’re hiring somebody to play on your stuff, be it live or in-studio, pay them. They’re trying to afford all this crap, too. ↩︎
- Generally, you buy products in bulk up-front, which can get expensive as a one-time cost. One way to offer merch for sale without the up-front cost is to use a print-on-demand (POD) service, like Printful. I set up my merch store online with them and am able to offer a wide variety of designs and colors without having to buy in bulk. Win-win. ↩︎
- An appreciable percentage of time spent as a gigging musician is just driving. ↩︎
- Dude, they’re flat! So freakin’ functional and low-profile. ↩︎
- It’s also a lot to carry. God, I do love it when venues have their own PA. My back loves it, too. I’m not getting any younger, friends. ↩︎
- I’ve tried quitting before. Never could get the hang of it. ↩︎
- I don’t wanna name names, but they spent a lot of years trying to convince us that the body of an acoustic guitar looks like the letter G. ↩︎
- I’d like to note here that I bought that system, and a lot of other gear since, from Zzounds. They have a “Play As You Pay” program that is an absolute godsend for musicians. ↩︎
- The Bose mixers are incredible, honestly. There are preset scenes that enable me to quickly flip between a solo show to an Echo and Ransom show without a lot of knob-tweaking, and ToneMatch settings that let you specify the type of mic/guitar/etc you’re using, allowing the mixer to optimize the channel for that input. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Lots of cool and remarkably useful bells and whistles to play with. ↩︎
- I’m sorry. Don’t shoot the messenger. ↩︎
- Welcome to the Internet. ↩︎
- I recognize the redundancy here, as, to most of you, I am a random dude on the Internet. ↩︎
- On this topic, anyway. Bigots can keep their opinions to themselves. ↩︎
JASON BENEFIELD 
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