Keyboard rental rates

[aibohphobia]

I'm a music director, working for a theater that wants to rent a synth for an upcoming show. Does anybody know going rates for renting an 88-key workstation, or any resources you can point me toward? Thanks!

[hephiroth]

i had to rent a 76-key triton pro workstation at music rehearsal facility in Nashville, TN, once, and it was only like $40 for the day. if you can find a place that rents them, they're usually not too expensive...however, since you're doing a show that would require a keyboard for weeks at a time, you could quickly run up a large bill. is purchasing (maybe a used board) a possibility? what capabilities do you need?

[Omega Monkey]

Yeah, call up Chuck Levin's and Victor Litz music stores. I'm sure they either rent stuff out or could point you to who does.

But yeah, depending on what kind of equipment the theater is thinking of renting, and how long they will need it, it might be more practical to just buy something outright.

For instance, a used Fantom X8 on ebay is roughly $2000 (and since it wont be someone's personal board and is just going to get used heavily for live work and rehearsals, minor cosmetic issues dont matter which means you might get something even cheaper). At the above rate of $40/day, if you were going to use it any more than 50 nights you would "break even" if you bought it and kept it afterwards. Of course, that number of nights goes WAY down when you consider you can just resell the thing for close to what you paid for it.

For instance,

-buy for $2000 (including shipping and whatnot)
-use for 2 weeks ($560 worth of renting)
-resell for $1600
-come out $160 ahead

And theoretically, if you managed to sell the thing for the same price you got it, all you would end up paying is the shipping from the original seller to you (probably $50-100, or the equivalent of 2 or 3 days worth of renting). But this way, you get all the time you need/want with the keyboard (and you WILL want at least a couple days to familiarize yourself with it before playing live, and also to customize any sounds as necessary, etc...).

So that's what I would do if this theater has the capital available to do that. Especially considering if this theater company is an ongoing concern, they are going to be doing shows in the future, many of which will likely need music, or even just sound effects (which can be produced from the onboard sampler), so it makes sense to just buy something outright and hang on to it.