[00:00:00] Welcome to episode 130 of the Bandhive podcast. It is time for another episode of the Bandhive podcast. My name is James Cross and I help independent artists tour smart this week on the podcast. I'm going to let you in on a little secret and I'm going to jump right in with it. Gear does not matter. I'm going to let that soak in for a second gear does not matter.

Now I can hear you screaming, whether you're driving down the road on your way to work or you're on a run, or you're just listening, sitting on your couch, whatever. I can hear you screaming. You're saying, what are you talking about? James? Of course gear matters and yeah, gear matters a little bit. But the extent that many artists obsess over gear is damaging their ability to put out a good final product and market that product properly.

We all know that yes, gear does matter to an extent because your music matters. [00:01:00] So if it sounds terrible, then people aren't going to. we all know that your music matters. And so if you're making music with bad gear, yeah. It's not going to sound as good as it could, but the difference between a great player on good gear and a great player on amazing gear is not nearly as big as the gap between a poor player on great gear and a great player on good.

So, if you are good at your instrument, you can get by with a $500 guitar. You don't need that $5,000 guitar and the guitarist who is terrible, isn't going to get anywhere with a $5,000 guitar because they don't have the skills to make their performance sound.

What I'm getting at here is there's a massive difference between a guitar that costs $100 and a guitar that costs $500. It costs five times as much, and it's roughly five times as good, a hundred dollars. Guitar's [00:02:00] probably never going to be great. I have a guitar that I got for $20. It's a PV. I did a bunch of work on it and yeah, it sounds okay.

But I mean, it's. It's an electric guitar. It's a Strat style guitar and it's hollow. It's never going to have great sustain or anything like that. It's still all stock. I just did a, a setup on it and you know what, it's playable. I like how it sounds, but I wouldn't necessarily use it for recording because it's not that good.

now, of course, there's also a difference between a $500 guitar and a $5,000. One costs 10 times as much, but it's not 10 times better than the $500 guitar. You're talking percent, maybe like five to 10% better. It's not worth paying 10 times as much, $4,500 more for that guitar.

Whereas it's almost always going to be worth paying the extra $400 to go from a $100 guitar to a $500 guitar. This happens in pretty much any industry. it's called the law of diminishing [00:03:00] returns. Essentially, what it means is that as something gets more expensive, the quality quickly increases until it gets to a certain point.

And after that point, the quality will increase at a much lower rate when you compare it to the price. So a $500 guitars, probably roughly five times better than a $100. But a $5,000 guitar is definitely not 10 times better than a $500 guitar, especially a $500 guitar that is set up properly. And maybe you've changed some things maybe you put on better tutors, maybe you added a different bridge.

Maybe you replaced the pickups. All of these are changes that you can make for a few hundred dollars. So maybe your $500 guitar has another $500 in parts. That's a $1,000 guitar. That's going to sound just as good as that $5,000. and now you're going to have $4,000 left over for pretty much anything else in your music career, whether it's lessons, recording, marketing, there's all kinds of things that you could work [00:04:00] on with that $4,000.

I'm going to say it, like I said, that $20 guitar, I probably wouldn't use that for recording. A super cheap instrument is probably a little too sketchy, but that mid range instrument can be more than enough for recording. Now, don't look at it as a a hundred, 505,000 because mid range, depending on the instrument could be totally different.

Like there are instruments where $500 would be an entry level instrument. So depending on what instrument you play, That's going to factor into it like a $500 drum kit. That's pretty much like rock bottom. So a mid range might be 2000, 3000. Whereas top of the line could be, eight to 10,000 or more like, I'm not a drummer.

So I don't know these prices, but I do know that typically, like the rock bottom and kits are like four to $500. So by going to that mid range instrument and not going for the best of the best, the top level of instruments, you can save hundreds or even thousands of dollars that you [00:05:00] can reinvest into your business.

So for example, I already mentioned marketing or lessons. You could also invest that into a better producer or touring with your band. This is all. Money that you can save and put somewhere else where you're going to have a higher return on an investment than by getting a guitar or other instrument.

That sounds a few percent better. It's really nice to have great instruments, but I don't know how many artists I've spoken to who have three to $5,000 in instruments when they could get by with $500 worth of instruments. And then they say that we can't afford production or marketing army. What's the point.

If you're trying to make a career of this, why would you put all your money into the instruments and not your production or marketing? Yeah, you have to have good music that comes from. If you can play well, you can make that mid-range instrument sound amazing.

And then especially when you have the budget to work with a great producer, because you didn't spend [00:06:00] thousands extra on instruments, they can help you make that sound better. They might even in the studio have their own instruments that you can use that are properly set up. Well-maintained all that kind of stuff.

So you don't even need to have an instrument when you go into the studio. Now I would always say, take your own instruments in because that's what you're going to be most comfortable playing, but you never know. There was a studio that I interned at for awhile and they had a 1966 or 67 fender Jazzmaster.

And that thing was amazing. So anytime I had a session there that's the guitar that I would use because that was going to be better than pretty much anything else people brought in unless they had a top. And. But it's still only made a small difference in the sound and it wouldn't have been worth any artist spending thousands to get that, just to record an album or an EAP or even a single song.

So if you want a career in music you need tomorrow. And giving up your marketing or [00:07:00] even good production for a few percent improvement in sound is not marketing or a smart business move. It's just a waste of money. So next time you're thinking about purchasing some gear. Whether it's an instrument, like a guitar or drums, or it's some other piece of gear, like, you know, a soundboard or an in-ear rack.

Think about what else you could use that money for and decide what the best long-term investment into your career is. Chances are, if you are not already investing into your marketing and production, the gear is not the best long-term investment because you'll buy that gear. And then you're going to keep playing shows to five or 10:00 PM.

Not knowing where to go with your career because you don't have any money for marketing. So to come back to it, the secret is gear does not matter. What matters is your music and the ability to perform that music, get a good recording of it. And mark. I'm not saying go out down with a $20 guitar, even a hundred dollars guitar, but [00:08:00] you do not need to spend $5,000 on a guitar for a recording.

You can get a perfectly passable recording with a $500 guitar. And to throw an example out there, Lee, from bring me the horizon. One of his main guitars is an Epiphone Les Paul that's about a $500 guitar. This right here on the wall behind me is an Epiphone lesson. Cost about $500 and you know what? It's good enough. If it's good enough for bring me the horizon. It's good enough for me.

That does it for this episode of the Bandhive podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening. I really appreciate it. And I hope that this episode has helped you kind of reshape your priorities as an artist, because if you really want to have a career in music, you need to be a smart business person who prioritizes their expenses because you know, money doesn't grow on trees.

And especially as budgets are becoming tighter and tighter in the music business, we need to be sure that we're spending money where it's needed and not just procrastinating by buying things that make [00:09:00] us happy. So buying gear. Yeah. You know, sometimes you need new gear, but more often than not, it's distraction from what you're actually trying to do.

So I hope that this episode will really reframe those thoughts for you. So next time you are debating of buying gear, you realize. This is not the best use of these funds right now. I'm going to go get better production and better marketing and make sure that people will actually hear my music rather than spending money on gear that I don't need.

That's all I have for today. It's really that simple. And you know, like I said, at the start of the episode, I can hear you screaming at me about this saying gear matters here matters.

Yeah, it does. But not to the same extent that the rest of your career does. So prioritize, make sure that you are spending your money, where it is needed. We'll be back with another brand new episode of the Bandhive podcast next Tuesday at 6:00 AM Eastern until then I hope you have a great week stay safe. And of course, as always, keep [00:10:00] rockin'!