Tone For Hire
Can’t afford a classic vintage or custom guitar or pedal? We look into the expanding world of renting classic gear on
Since the late 90s, Iain Henderson has been collecting guitars, selecting models known for their association with notable players, including some of the instruments owned by the artists themselves. Although the idea of lending out your prized possessions would horrify most collectors, in 2018 Iain decided to share the love and launched God’s Own Guitars, passionately believing that his guitars were made to be played.
“I thought how nice it would be to keep hold of them while allowing other people to appreciate them, too,” Iain tells us. “I mean, it’s a shame when they just get left in cases not being played. That was the original idea behind God’s Own Guitars. The sharing economy has become quite popular with companies such as Fat Llama bringing lenders and borrowers together. It’s a great idea when it comes to expensive gear of any type that you might only use a handful of times. People also like the sharing economy because it can help them declutter their lives a bit. I mean, power tools are a good example; you might not want to fork out for something you only use occasionally. And the same is often true of guitars.”
Although the guitar industry has experienced a major boom overall this past year, with London on lockdown the pandemic has hit Iain’s business hard. Unable to gig and travel, and with more time at home to kill, people have simply been buying more guitars. Gibson and Martin have reported monumental boosts in sales during the pandemic, while Fender has stated 2020 as being its best year for guitar sales to date. This trend has also been reflected across the used instruments marketplace, as prices have spiked. Right now, it’s a seller’s market. But Iain hasn’t let that put him off tweaking his inventory as business slowly begins to pick up again.
“There are two main things that impacted the business,” explains Iain. “First, no-one was able to travel. About a third of the business comes from people travelling to London from outside the UK, including musicians on tour, plus I tend to deliver the guitars personally. But last week, I did my first hire in 15 months to someone visiting the UK who needed a guitar to play in their hotel room. They were visiting for 10 days, and they fancied the ex-Alex Trimble [Two Door Cinema Club] 2016 Martin LX1 Little Martin, made famous by Ed Sheeran. That’s the sort of thing I expect we’ll see more and more of in the near future, hopefully.
“It tends to be musicians and studios hiring guitars, but people hire them for photoshoots and film shoots quite a bit, too. We also get the occasional random request. One of the more memorable ones was when somebody hired out that Martin LX1 for a marriage proposal. This guy was coming from China with his girlfriend/ fiancée-to-be and had booked into a B&B in Greenwich. I had to go there first and drop the guitar off so he could later ‘stumble across it’, serenade her and then propose. Very romantic!
“The second thing is that people have been buying a lot of guitars recently. If you look at the auction prices over the past 12 months, you’ll see they’ve shot up. But it’s actually turned out okay. For the first couple of months in lockdown, virtually nobody was hiring. It was like a ghost town across the whole of the UK. But by June 2020, there was a trickle of people – who were
“I thought it would be nice to keep hold of the guitars while allowing others to appreciate them, too”
mainly doing recording projects and video shoots. And there were some people who wanted to hire three or four guitars for several months to give themselves time to decide what they wanted to buy. In the end, last year worked out okay; the turnover was around two thirds of 2019. Now, it seems like it’s really coming back again. In fact, there are some days when it seems like it’s almost too busy!”
With the used market especially active, Iain has been able to make some additions to the collection, while finding new homes for a handful of notable instruments.
“I’ve sold a few guitars recently, like the 2010 Gibson Custom Shop Don Felder Hotel California EDS-1275,” says Iain. “I also sold a signed 2012 Gibson Custom Shop Kirk Hammett Flying V – number three of 50 – to one of his biggest fans in the States. My aim is to swap things in and out and keep it fresh.
“I’ve just got a 1969 Gibson Barney Kessel Regular. That’s the one with the crown inlay on the headstock and nickel-plated hardware; the Barney Kessel Custom has fancier inlays and gold hardware. I’ve also just got a 60s Fender Mustang – famously played by Kurt Cobain– and a ’62 [Epiphone] Coronet like Johnny Marr’s. That’s a lovely guitar. It’s really light, but with the P-90 it has a huge sound. I also picked up an ’89 Rickenbacker 330/12 in Fireglo, like Johnny Marr’s, and went a bit leftfield with an early 80s Andy Summersstyle Roland Guitar Synthesizer. The guitar is a great build and you can play it like a regular one, but it does far more, of course. It’s an analogue synth and it’s a lot of fun.”
Also among the collection at God’s Own Guitars are some Holy Grail effects pedals.
“We focus mainly on guitars,” Iain emphasises, “but every now and then someone will call up in need of a pedal. We have some really classic stompboxes in the inventory from the likes of Lovetone and Analog Man. A little while ago, the producer Rob Cass rang up and asked if he could get hold of our 1983 Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer for Kirk Hammett to record Greeny with. He just called up and explained he needed it for the Peter Green tribute recording at Abbey Road. He was very kind and took a pic of the pedal. But that’s the closest I’ve got to Greeny so far, I’m afraid!”
So, aside from the old-school method of simply picking up the phone, how do people go about selecting and hiring a guitar from Iain’s collection?
“The inventory is on our website – www.godsownguitars.com,” says Iain. “The starting price for hiring a guitar is
“Producer Rob Cass asked if he could get hold of our 1983 Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer for Kirk Hammett to record Greeny with”
£10 per day, which is very reasonable. The daily rates go down after five days, and then again after a few weeks. The most popular hires tend to be the standard stuff, like the ’92 Mexican Standard Telecaster. That’s 10 quid a day to hire. They might not be the most expensive models, but they sound and play amazingly well. People read the reviews of others saying how nice the guitars are. There’s a great deal of responsibility if you’re hiring in terms of maintenance and setup. The guitars all need to be working at their best.”
As well as providing standard working instruments, there is also a demand for those guitars that are just a little bit special.
“People often want a particular sound for a recording session,” Iain tells us. “If someone wanted, say, a vintage Precision Bass to record with, we have a ’72 P-Bass, which is available for £40 per day. All of the guitars are on the website in the Hire A Guitar section, and then there’s the part called The Collection, which features some instruments that were owned by notable players. People really like to get their hands on ones that were owned and played by ‘name’ guitarists like Noel Gallagher.
“There’s also a section called Hirer Videos [under the Gallery tab on the website] featuring bands and artists who are currently making their name, like Glass Animals, Anna B Savage and Lisey Tigra. One aspect to guitar hire is making music videos, and we often get approached by film companies looking for guitars to shoot with. There’s a new Hendrix documentary in the pipeline and the makers got in touch about hiring a Strat and a Duo-Sonic for that. So people hire for a variety of reasons. I mean, as well as being great-playing guitars, they also look nice on film.”
With some downtime to contend with, Iain has been doing some filming of his own.
“During lockdown, I started a YouTube channel to demo the guitars – and if you fancy feeling good about your own playing it won’t take long if you flick through a few of those videos,” he laughs. “Normally, the demos are related to a significant date. I just did one honouring the release of Motorcycle Emptiness by Manic Street Preachers. It features one of the newer guitars – a 1990 Gibson Les Paul Custom in Alpine White, which is the same as ‘Faithful’ [what James Dean Bradfield calls his favourite guitar]. I’m just doing a video on [Velvet Revolver’s 2004 debut album] Contraband, which I think is one of Slash’s finest performances during those years. I’ll be demoing the 2004 Gibson Slash Les Paul signature model for that. That’s what he played during the
“There’s a great deal of responsibility in terms of maintenance and setup. The guitars need to be working at their best”
Velvet Revolver years. It’s fantastic. But don’t expect any Slash solos!”
Now that the gig circuit is starting to open up in London and beyond, things are beginning to look brighter for God’s Own Guitars, as well as for Iain personally as a dedicated music lover.
“A lot of tickets are being sold at the moment,” he notes. “I’ve just booked tickets to see Kasabian. Hopefully, we’ll have a breakthrough and everyone will be able to go back to gigging as before. I saw John Bramwell recently at the Half Moon [in Putney, London] and he was kind of tearing up a bit. I mean, not being able to gig for so long is tragic for a lot of musicians and music fans. On the positive side, I’ve heard some great recordings from people in recent months, which is fantastic. But to see it live, is the thing. All this goes to show that gigs really are the lifeblood of music.”
“I’ve heard some great recordings in recent months, but to see it live is the thing – gigs really are the lifeblood of music”