This December marks a decade since the passing of Thomas Garnet "Gar" Gillies, the man who was responsible for what local music historian John Einarson calls "the sound of Winnipeg."
As the founder of The Garnet Amplifier Company, he created workhorse amps and PA systems for the touring musician form the 1960s to the late 1980s. They never reached the scale of Fender, Vox or Marshall, but for those who played Garnet amps, they were reminders of Canadian ingenuity and practicality.
They were reliable. They sounded huge. And they are in danger of being forgotten.
Humble Beginnings
Randy Bachman with the Garnet Herzog
Gar got his start in electronics doing radio repairs as a young man. He later opened an electronics repair shop out of the back of an appliance store in Winnipeg's Osbourne Village. It was in that shop that he eventually met the members of The Guess Who and other local musicians who brought him their broken amps in hopes of a fix.
"[The Guess Who and other musicians] encouraged [Gar] to make amps of his own, which he did. The first amps that he built didn't have a brand name yet; they started as homemade projects that he sold to people who were interested. His customers seemed to like them, so he thought he could make a go of it as an actual manufacturer," said Peter Thiessen, who Gar passed his company along to.
Eventually, these amps would come to bear the Garnet logo. That is, once Gar came up with a prototype that early Guess Who guitarist Randy Bachman couldn’t blow up. They named it the Herzog, and it would go on to define the sound of the band.
A Burgeoning Empire
Einarson points out that Gar enlisted the help of his two sons, Russel and Garnie, as well as a small production team in the late 1960s to begin mass-producing a few of their different models. In the coming years, their amps could be seen on stages all over the world behind bands like The Guess Who and Buffalo Springfield.
One of the biggest factors in Garnet's early success was the fact that they were produced right in Winnipeg. This made them more affordable for local musicians who couldn't shell out the cash for the other brands that attracted a higher price tag.
1960's Garnet 15R Spring Reverb Unit
"Because they were produced locally, it made them more affordable for the local kids. Kids are always broke. Musicians, generally, are always broke. They couldn't afford the stuff that came out of the States – Fender; they couldn't afford the stuff that came out of England – Marshall. But they could afford the Garnets that were being made locally," said Thiessen.
However, even though Gar was "known far and wide in these parts as the man to see if you had a tube amp that needed servicing," his knowledge of his craft wasn't the only reason people came to him. "Gar had a huge heart," Thiessen explains, and was never one to shy away from lending a hand if someone couldn't quite afford to buy one of his amps. He would often rent gear for whatever someone could afford to toss his way.
"If a musician walked in and said, 'Look, I need an amp. I think I'm going places, but I just can't afford it.' He'd say, 'You know what, here's a piece of gear. Take it, pay me ten bucks a week or whatever you can, and we'll worry about it later.' And, there's a lot of stories of people getting that kind of support from him … He was a real class act," said Thiessen.
A Difficult Time
The 1980s would prove to be a trying time for the company, though. Transistor amps with printed circuits could be produced cheaper than their hand-wired, tube counterparts. And for an amp company run by a renowned tube purist, that spelled bad news. By 1989, "He just couldn't compete, and the company went under," said Thiessen.
1970s Garnet The Deputy II Model G260B
Garnet production totally stopped. But a few years later, Gar would move into "a little hole-in-the-wall place" on St. Matthews Avenue, repairing old Garnets as well as tube amps from different manufacturers.
"That's where he was when I first met him – just doing small repairs for local guys who'd bring an amp in to be fixed,” said Thiessen. “He wasn't making anything new at that time.”
Thiessen would sniff out old Garnets from pawn shops, secondhand stores, and garage sales and bring them to Gar so he could fix them. Thiessen likens this process to "getting your Fender amp worked on by Leo Fender."
"I visited his shop quite regularly … Whenever I found another nice one, I would take it to his place and show it off to him. We'd talk a little bit, and he'd reminisce about the old days and such. We became good friends," said Thiessen.
Garnet Revived
Garnet Limited Edition Herzog Re-Issue V
This friendship would eventually lead to an amp building partnership between Thiessen and Gar when Garnet finally decided to reissue their famous Herzog in the early 2000s. Thiessen took over Garnet after Gar's fight with cancer tragically ended in 2006. Since then, Thiessen has been building amps "the old-fashioned way – one at a time, point-to-point wiring, tubes only.” He even does all of the carpentry himself.
With a stockpile of old parts left to him, Thiessen has reissued several Garnet models since Gar’s passing, including the Session Man and the Herzog. He plans to release a DIY kit for another one of their preamps, the Guillotine.
Throughout our interview, Thiessen's respect for Gar was more than apparent. Always careful "not to blow [his] own horn too much" and never wanting to stray too far from the Garnet legacy, Thiessen's reissues are still constructed the way Gar built them and closely follow his schematics. Any changes are subtle "because I owe a debt to Gar, and I want to respect his legacy. I would never try to say that I know better or anything like that," said Thiessen.
"I see myself as the caretaker of a little piece of Manitoban and Canadian history … I'm not trying to take any of the credit for anything, [for] all the greatness that happened before I came along. I'm just trying to be the custodian of a little piece of Canadiana."
Garnet Amplifiers