Who owns the PA in your band?

roundthebend

I'm taking about generic pub covers bands here, nothing high end. Just a bunch (4) of modest musicians who do it for fun and a bit of beer money.

To be independent of kit hire and sound engineers we need our own PA system. But then you have the question of who owns it? Who stores it? Who transports it? Who maintains it?

I feel the best way is for one person to do that, or at least each piece of kit is solely owned by a single person rather than saying all 4 people jointly own everything. E.g. I might own the mixer, someone else owns the tops, another owns a sub etc.

Now, how does the cost and extra responsibility get covered off?

I'm suggesting to my band that I own the lot, and I take an extra cut from each gig until I've recovered, say, 50% of the outlay. From then on I'll take a smaller cut as a token fee for the effort. Maybe in s couple of years I'll be in profit, but then more kit will be needed maybe.

Main thing is to get it all agreed up front. Have I missed any factors? What if something breaks down and needs repair or replacing?

Dontgiveupyourdayjob

I'm very lucky in that respect. In my band the lead singer and her partner own all the PA gear. He's the 'sound engineer' too - so he sets everything up and makes sure it's all tickety boo.

All the rest of us have to do is turn up with our own gear and plug it in, and then help strip everything down and load the van at the end. He takes a cut of the fee for his troubles.

roundthebend

Dontgiveupyourdayjob said:

I'm very lucky in that respect. In my band the lead singer and her partner own all the PA gear. He's the 'sound engineer' too - so he sets everything up and makes sure it's all tickety boo.

All the rest of us have to do is turn up with our own gear and plug it in, and then help strip everything down and load the van at the end. He takes a cut of the fee for his troubles.

What % cut does he take, if you don't mind me asking?

Tannin

Yep. You are on the right track. With our mob the singer owned it and we paid him to hire it. From memory we paid about half what we would have paid to hire one from a hire agency. We saved money, he made a little bit, everybody happy. 

Mind you, we all paid for our own instruments and amps and in the smaller venues we didn't need to put guitar and bass and drums through the PA, just the vocals, so you could say that the singer should have paid for the PA himself as he was the only one who needed it, but actually that wasn't the case as we all did backing vocals and the guitar player sometimes used to sing lead.

Bottom line: get an arrangement you have all agreed to up front and don't sweat the small change. Just enjoy playing. 

Wazmeister

I purchased, owned, lumped, carried, maintained and set up the PA in my old band…

As a result, it is now my ‘ex’ band

p90fool

Wazmeister said:

I purchased, owned, lumped, carried, maintained and set up the PA in my old band…

Me too, in my current band. I also had to lend the bass player a bass and an amp for over a year. At one point I realised that my wife and I (she's the drummer) had over seven grand sat on the stage while the two singers owned a pair of SM58s and a plectrum, despite us all being paid the same. 

I made the pair of them buy their own vocal-only PA, and the bass player his own amp. He still doesn't own a bass and according to the pics of a local music photographer on Facebook, seems to have lent mine to someone else. 

Don't be like me, in other words. 

slacker

There's a film where the lead singer gets fired and takes all of his gear which is a scarf tied around the mic stand.

In my experience it has varied. If the singer don't play they are sometimes expected to have a small pa. Some bands split gear. Some bands the leader owns the pa and sometimes a van. Sometimes the cost is split and the pa gets a percentage to repay the band sometimes not. 

I depped for a friend's covers band where the pa cost a fortune and all the band money went into paying off a loan. The pa took two hours to unload and set up. I worked minimum wage most of the day as a roadie.
I didn't do it again.

If there's a clear leader then they own the pa. It's difficult to fire someone or even ask them to learn their instrument if they own the pa.

Danny1969

It's the old joke .... if you see the bass player take a solo then he probably owns the PA

There's so many ways of doing it. We have a 4.2 ton jumbo Transit van and all the equipment inc guitar and bass amps lives in that. At the end of the gig the van is packed and it goes back to my gaff. No one lumps amps and PA into their house which is nice. 

You could split the cost .... 2 people buy an active speaker each, one buys the desk. These things are sellable on their own should the band split up. 

Roland

When I joined the band it had its own PA, and I had mine. I say “it” because I don’t know who owned the original equipment. Over the years we’ve each contributed replacement parts. Except for the cables it’s clear who owns which bits. 

Most of the equipment is stored at my house because I’ve got the space, and the biggest car.

Musicwolf

I own our PA which I already had coming into the band, same goes for the handful of lights.

When I joined this band we were a 5 piece with only the singer and myself (backing vocals and Helix) going into the PA.  We're now a 3 piece with backing tracks, vocals and 2 guitars direct to the PA.  That's fine as long as everything works but, if we have to replace any part of it, we'll have to come up with a plan to jointly fund it.

Ossyrocks

I own the PA in my band. I have always owned a PA since the 90’s in various forms. But I used to be the singer, so I think that’s fair enough. These days I’m not the singer, I’m the bass player, and my PA gets used simply because it’s the best one between us. It does irk me to have to load it in the car, take it, set it up, run FOH, break it down, load it back in the car, load it back in the house etc. I’m actually thinking of selling it, then letting the band know I no longer have one! When I started playing bass, I thought one of the perks would be an easier life gear wise! 

I’m never comfortable with uneven splits of money either. To me, unless you’re brought in to a big  professional function style band where everyone is on wages, say £200 a man, then the money should always be an even split.
Rob

EricTheWeary

Storage was essentially whoever had space. At one point our PA was stored in the same garage where the sax player’s Alsatians slept so it was always covered in an inch of dog hair. 

I have made some financial contributions toward PA gear either up front or via gig fees but have never ended up with any of it so I’ve lost £hundreds I guess over the years I guess. It is one of those things that even if there is a clear and sensible solution I’ve never been in a band that’s done it. 

Dontgiveupyourdayjob

roundthebend said:

Dontgiveupyourdayjob said:

I'm very lucky in that respect. In my band the lead singer and her partner own all the PA gear. He's the 'sound engineer' too - so he sets everything up and makes sure it's all tickety boo.

All the rest of us have to do is turn up with our own gear and plug it in, and then help strip everything down and load the van at the end. He takes a cut of the fee for his troubles.

What % cut does he take, if you don't mind me asking?

It's usually an even split. There's 4 of us in the band 'proper' and we split the fee 5 ways. It's not actually a written in stone sort of arrangement, we're all pretty casual about it really. We all play more for the fun of it than the actual money anyway; the £ is just an added bonus. 

TheBigDipper

I've been in bands where we wrote an informal "equal partnership" letter and all signed it. It meant we could buy PA gear as a partnership and each of us own the same percentage of it and track it as an asset. When someone leaves, you agree the market value of their share and buy them out. Maybe their replacement buys in and pays for that share and maybe they don't (or can't afford to). But gig fees can be used to pay it off. There's always a way. 

mudslide73

Our drummer and the other guitarist jointly own the PA and have actively discouraged any financial assistance when renewing any items. I've tried to contribute in other ways (lighting, stands, recording equipment etc.) but obviously the cost isn't anywhere near that of the PA. 

robinbowes

I used to work for a PA company in York back in the 80s. I also did live sound for a while for a successful party band.

Fast forward to 2017 and I find myself playing guitar in a band featuring the singer from the aforementioned party band. He wanted to buy a PA so we weren't hiring in all the time, but I knew it would be down to me to make it sound good because of my history.

We agreed that I would buy a decent PA and the band would pay me £100 to "hire" it. I then spent the best part of £10k on a great rig (HK Audio Linear 5, Yamaha TF-Rack mixer + digital stagebox, plenty of great mics, DI boxes, cables, etc).

We ended up only doing around 20 gigs before lockdown effectively finished the band. I still have the PA!

sw67

Quite simple - the PA was purchased with gig money and belongs to the band and the current members equally. Cost us about 2k four years ago. We had a problem with a previous guy that left and wanted bought out of PA and as he stored it we didn’t have a choice. Now if you leave it’s with nothing as agreed by everyone before buying new pa

PhilKing

I own the PA for my band.  When I joined they had a small PA that was a couple of active speakers with a mixer built in.  This was fine for when they were starting, but the band grew and we needed more, especially as we had an electronic drum kit.  I already had a mixer and a lot of mics.  I picked up some large active speakers and stands.  Eventually we needed more (it was a 10 piece band at that point), so I added an extra couple of speakers.  We used the old PA for monitoring.  I also have the multicores.   I never asked for any money for it, as a lot of the band members were younger and didn't have much money.    In other bands we have pooled money to get the PA.

fastonebaz

Someone needs to own it.

thomasw88

Last few years I own the pa and lights.

  everyone owns their own instruments/amps etc.
 Makes the whole thing less hassle.  I take £10 a gig extra to cover a bit of fuel and a bit towards the pa costs.  I'm thinking Ill have to put that cost up a wee bit in the next couple of months.

I did make the singer buy a microphone as it was the only thing she had to have, but I do have enough mics to cover if need be.

guitarmangler

Four of us in a five piece band joint own the PA. Other guitarist bought the lights, I bought a behringer xair mixer and do the sound. Other guitar player stores it in his garage and gets it to the gig. We help tear down and set up.