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Harris Hire

 

Digger at www.retrosellers.com talks to Phil Harris about his Vintage and Specialist Musical Instrument and Equipment Hire business, Harris Hire.

 

The 1950s 

 

The 1960s 

Digger: The customer pays for insurance?

 

Phil: They do. Insurance liability from the second it’s collected into the client. But 99% of our work is delivery so things are safe because our vans are all carpeted on the inside.

 

Digger: Is it mainly UK?

 

Phil: We’ve done some stuff abroad, like for Stephen Segal when he was making a film in Berlin with Wycliffe Jean. We took some original Fenders over there for him. Clapton when he did the Pavarotti thing we sent a Tweed Twin over to Eric. We do bits and pieces, Morrissey when he went to France for his recent album and also U2 when they went to record abroad and they’ve also used us a lot in the UK as well.

 

Digger: You must have a big Christmas card list?

 

Phil: Yeah. I don’t tend to meet them so it’s a one way street. They’re always under the heading of ‘very busy’ and I’m always sitting here doing nothing all day!

 

Digger: Yes, as I’ve noticed when I’ve been trying to get hold of you for the past few days! So, sourcing of the gear, is it getting to be more difficult?

 

Phil: All of the equipment we bought many, many years ago, over thirty odd years ago. Obviously the fashions change, so that, for example, these days everybody goes crazy about the Tele Deluxe, the neck Humbucker, the later Tele Custom like Keith Richards had. So we have to buy in things subject to fashion. When the acoustic bass guitars hit the scene, what we tend to do is we go to the top of the tree. If there’s a new instrument we’ll go and buy the ‘best of’. In the late 80s we hired out acoustic bass guitars and a good friend of mine, Benny Gallagher, he leant me his Samitis,  but it wasn’t very fair me hiring it out and wotnot. So, eventually I went and bough a top of the range Martin. You must buy the best new instruments. And we do, so that when the Coral Sitar guitar became big I bought a lovely one - the Coral Sitar guitar I’ve now got I bought many years ago from Graham Gouldman and it was the one he used on all his sixties hits.

 

Digger: He wrote some fantastic stuff.

 

Phil: A very talented writer and producer as well as musician. So a lot of the equipment we’ve got has been around for many years and they’re established pieces of the musical instrument field. The most coveted and prestigious item is a 1958-1960 Les Paul, which changes hands for £150,000 and above.

 

Digger: Did you ever meet him?

 

Phil: I could have done, but no. I write my own column in Guitar and Bass magazine and I write a column called Hooked On Classics and when Les Paul died I was asked to do my personal appraisal of his life and what his achievements were. With his name being on one of the most iconic instruments ever. The most expensive production guitar on this earth. I hope I did him some justice – if not he’ll come and haunt me but he hasn’t done so yet.

 

Digger: He was doing some incredible stuff from the forties onwards wasn’t he from his garage and the back of his car?

 

Phil: He was an innovator. Double tracking, he had the first headless guitar. He had the first solid body guitar. What you’ve got to bear in mind and I know Les Paul didn’t come on the scene until 1952 and Leo Fender beat him by some two and a half years. But Les Paul was around in the mid-forties and if Gibson had been a bit quicker on the uptake then Gibson would have beaten Fender to the finishing line for the first solid body guitar. They just thought he was a bit of a loony with this weird old thing that you had to clip on – semi acoustic sides. Not only did this make the Les Paul which is one of the most beautiful guitars ever made but also that idea has been used on 335s,345s, 355s with the solid wood through the middle and then the acoustic wings off. The EXACT idea was not only made into a solid guitar but it was also made into a semi acoustic guitar.

 

Digger: What’s the biggest buzz you get out of this business?

 

Phil: Well, I like to see things. It’s always nice when I pull an amp or a guitar out that I haven’t seen for a long while and I open up the case. It never ceases to amaze me the ingenuity of how these things were made and what they are.

 

Digger: Do you get invited to see them being used?

 

Phil: I do. There’s a new distribution called Lazy J and they’re built on the theme of the late 50s Tweed Fender but that’s where the similarity ends. But they’re built on original specification and original ideals brought through to a 2010 conclusion. They’re amazing and Pete Townshend bought a complete rig off me before the Albert Hall gig. If you go on YouTube and type in Lazy J Albert Hall... Eric Clapton’s used them and Clapton’s producer who also plays in The Archangels. Eric Clapton in particular does his own thing musically and couldn’t give a flying ferret for anyone else. We actually customised his Fender amps and we put a valve tremolo unit in it and Lazy J conversion in the Fenders and they’re now saying they’re going to make an Eric Clapton amp based on our idea.

 

Digger: People like to copy their heroes.

 

Phil: if you take a Lazy J amp the way it works with the ambience and the harmonic response, Fender have never made an amplifier like that, not from 1948 to 2010. They made some great amps but the Lazy J – people go crazy about it. It’s another level. It takes Fender in their original guise and actually beats them at their game.

 

Digger: The technology doesn’t seem to change that much.

 

Phil: No, point to point wired, the reverb unit is a reverb tape, a proper pre-amp in there with a valve and its own little transformer. The tremolo is a valve tremolo. Everything is using original ideas but there’s certain things people don’t realise. On the amp it’s got an attenuator and people think that’s a speaker attenuator. It’s not, it’s an amplifier attenuator and it works on the amp side and you can lower from a Lazy 20, which is our most popular model which is a twenty watt 1x12. It lowers from twenty watts to five. You still get the ambience, the tone, the harmonics at five watts. With a regular speaker attenuator it just chokes it like a road traffic accident and what comes out the other end is like a strangled cat, at best.

 

 

The 1970s 

 

 

Digger: Where’s the business going?

 

Phil: We’ve got the hire side, it’s now opened up to the retail side and in the last year we’ve really opened up some nice retail. We’ve sold some high-end guitars, amplifiers, effects pedals and so on, percussion and keyboards. Everything we hire we now try to trade in. Now we’re actively looking to buy product to sell product. On our website it’s still only a shortlist – you can’t update it every day or every week because things are coming and going all the time. We did some work recently for Jimmy Page – he asked me to go out and find something and it’s not on my list. I’m every collector’s mate, because having a hire company means I’m not worried about a cheap deal and I’ll pay anything for the right item. So the collectors love me. And I don’t run a store so I haven’t got the overheads, so someone can come to the office here and try something out. We’ve got no sound problems here and we’re not paying for staff or a place in Denmark Street. They’re getting instruments that are superior to Denmark Street. And a service that is superior with me or with Chris. Denmark Street is a tourist money pit. Tourists who come there have to buy a plectrum and others who buy there are being extorted and not every time are they even getting what they think they’re buying. I won’t and can’t plead ignorance so when I sell something it comes with a complete thumbs up – this is exactly what it says on the box. I pride myself that people can buy from me with confidence. The other thing now is Lazy J – it was weird because I’m pro vintage but also pro-specialist but vintage was my first love. And when these amps were first introduced about two years ago being made as one-offs, I saw one and the guy who makes them Jessie Hoff, is an old buddy of mine. He brought one to my house and said “have a go on it Phil” and I thought how you always feel when you listen to a friend’s tape – you have to be polite don’t you?! So I plugged into this thing and it was a very early version of what me make now and I was so bowled over it was like that guy with the Remington shaver. I bought the company.

 

Digger: Victor Kiam!

 

Phil: That’s the man, not that I bought the company but certainly I’m in charge of sales and distribution and he makes a pedal called a Cruiser which is an outrageous pre-amp that doesn’t work on the basis of all the other pre-amps around. Everything he makes is in its own direction. The other thing that I’m very pleased about is that people who have some nice instruments – these days you get a lot of producers and we work with a lot of them – Steve Robson, Juice, Pete Davis – a lot of big artists are through those people. These people did amass bits and pieces in the 80s and 90s and I was specking to Jimmy Hogarth who is a very good record producer who has just done work with James Blunt and James Morrison. He said “Everything I’ve got they go and buy” and I said “That’s great, tell them to call me!” What’s happened is that all the producers are now giving me their equipment – guitars, amps, effects because now they want a really special eye to get them working to the top of their game. They’re not interested in looking at them, they‘re playing them. Mark Knopfler, who is one of the fussiest, used to send his guitar to the States and I said “What’s the point of sending it to America? By the time it’s back it’s moved again and you’re back to square one.” So he gave us his guitar tentatively to work on and he was so impressed the next one we got was his famous Penta Suhr, the one he used for all the Dire Straits work he did. This was  followed by the Sultans of Swing red strap which he had us re-spray and restore which is the ultimate accolade. He trusts us. So we have an amazing guitar repair guy and our amp repair guy used to work at Vox in the sixties – you don’t get any better than that. He’s actually writing a book at the moment on Vox  and because Harris Hire has a massive Vox collection he has a free hand to use those for reference and pictures for the book.

 

Digger: Vox and Marshall are iconic brands.

 

Phil: I knew Terry Marshall, Jim Marshall’s son, years ago. It’s now gone back to the fold.

 

Digger: Thanks Phil for that detailed look into the Vintage Musical Instruments business. It was fascinating. Sounds like a great business you’ve got there.

 

Phil: Thanks Digger. It’s a passion, a pleasure and a living