The gear people actually rent, and what sits there
· 3 min read
Not everything in your cupboard is worth listing. A practical look at what moves and why.
Not everything is worth listing. Some equipment rents steadily; plenty never moves at all. The difference follows a fairly consistent logic.
The rule underneath it
Something rents when owning it is disproportionate to needing it.
That is: expensive, bulky, specialist, or needed rarely. If a piece of gear is cheap and used constantly, people buy it. If it's expensive and used occasionally, they rent.
Everything below follows from that.
What moves
Electric pianos and vintage keys. Rhodes, Wurlitzers, Clavinets. Expensive, heavy, wanted for specific songs, and a nightmare to own if you use one twice a year. Consistently the best category.
Analogue synths. Especially anything with a reputation. Half the demand is people wanting to try before buying, which is a real and repeating market.
Amps and cabs. Particularly for touring musicians, fly-in players, and anyone without a car. A good amp in a city centre with delivery is a reliable earner.
Specific snares. Small, valuable, personal, and the one drum people genuinely chase a particular sound from. Rents well despite being easy to own, because drummers want that snare for that track.
Unusual acoustic instruments. Harmonium, upright bass, cello, unusual percussion, anything folk or orchestral. Small market, almost no competition, and people searching for these are highly motivated.
Anything for a video shoot. Gear rented to look right rather than sound right is a real and under-served demand.
What sits
Microphones under a few hundred pounds. Cheap enough to buy, small enough to own. Only worth listing as part of a package.
Interfaces and standard studio gear. Everyone who needs one has one.
Pedals, mostly. Individually too cheap to justify the transaction. A curated board is a different proposition.
Guitars and basses, with exceptions. Most players own several and are particular about them. Genuinely unusual or vintage instruments do rent; a decent workhorse doesn't.
Anything fragile with no case. People won't risk it and neither should you.
The things that decide whether yours books
Delivery. The biggest single factor. Rental is a logistics business — someone hiring a Rhodes for Saturday has thought about their session, not about a van. Offering delivery at a stated fee converts dramatically better than pickup-only.
Specificity. "Vintage synth" gets nothing. "1983 Juno-106, recently serviced, original chorus" gets found, because that's what people search.
Honest condition. Say what's worn, what's noisy, what sticks. It builds more trust than a perfect description and prevents the argument at handover.
Completeness. Power supply, pedal, case, stand. An instrument arriving without its specific PSU is useless, and this is the most common cause of a bad rental.
Photographs of the actual item. Not a press shot. People are assessing condition.
Pricing, briefly
A day rate around 3–5% of replacement value is the usual convention, with a weekend at roughly 1.5× and a week at 3–4×.
Adjust up for scarcity and for hassle. If there are three of these in your city, you're not competing on price. If it takes you an hour to move it, price the hour.
What to do with the rest
If something doesn't fit the "rents" list, the honest options are: keep it because you use it, sell it, or accept it's sitting there.
Listing everything you own dilutes your listings and makes the ones that would rent harder to find. Two well-written listings for things people actually want beat fifteen for things they don't.
List a piece of gear — free, and about five minutes each.