If you are starting out, i urge you to stay away from loans for equipment at least until you have successfully established enough relationships with clients that keep calling you back for work. You are in nyc? reach out to mixers in your area to rent from them, even if that means to pass on the entire rental fee or even paying a little on top. You‘ll get a chance to establish relationships with your fellow mixers and likely they‘ll consider you to pass gigs on to in the future. As mentioned before this will also allow you to try different brands and see what you like most. It‘s also money well spent to rent some equipment over the weekend and play around with it just to gain confidence in its use. For the very last minute gigs say your not available and pass it on to another mixer. Once you have some Cash put aside start piece by piece with the basics; boom, mic, batteries and distro, used recorder or mixer, solder cables - even for stuff you don’t own. wireless last. By that time you’ll know what works best for your needs.
Give it time and enjoy the small but steady progress and be happy your not sitting on 25k worth of gear that you have to pay off while waiting for the calls to come in. Because sometimes it can be a looong wait.