Hail Tzeetch! I'm on Xegony too! Brilinnia is my bard's name, although I've
played this game so long I have 2 alternates: Brilinia (wiz) and Brillinia
(cleric). There's several Xegony bards on this list. Glad to have you! What
guild are you in, or are you?
Equipment wise, sounds like you need some Hate and HS time. Definitely do
the tamborine quest, much easier than camping the sharkdrum! Also, try to
get into Vox/Nag raids before it's too late!
I am a patchwork bard but here's what I use as of last night:
Head: Hammerhead Helm
Face: another WW drop here, forgot which one
Neck: I forgot the exact name, one of those things off the WW dragons that
have awesome stats.
Chest: Imbrued
Arms: SS (had kylong til last weekend, Neero felt sorry for me!)
Wrists: kylong and hero
Hands: SS
Waist: sash of the dragonborn
Legs: kylong (but I put in an order for some out of WW last night!)

Feet: Imbrued
Primary: rare dagger off seb jugs (I'm at work, can't look at equip.)
Secondary: martune rapier
Range: Runed bone fork
Sharkskin drum, gypsy lute, horn

I hate Karnors. Seems to be full of idiots everytime I zone in and I need to
go camp the warlord for the skull for the epic! Blah!

Brilinnia Ban'Sidhe (yellow and a half to 56, that means about a month?)
Excalibur, Xegony