You can get some really good bard weapons, these three are all above .45 ratio which is exceptional for the price (p99/blue).
Sionachie's Partisan Dagger 9/19 wt1.8 - 400pp
Melodious Truncheon 1HB 11/23 wt1.5 - 450pp
Sarnak Skullsplitter 1HS 12/26 wt4.5 -200pp
As for Armour - I was gifted a set of banded to start and then ended up at something like WT:70/70:STR before I started looting things - so I started buying weight effective things. like Azure Sleeves (ac10 wt0.6), TreeWeave (wt12 str10) and Crested Helm (wt5 str6).
I made a list of Weight Effective bard gear on my wiki page.
Magelo_Blue:Inyahin Elbereth