Mesa Boogie - History

History

Randall Smith, the creator of Mesa/Boogie, began his career at Prune Music, a Chinese grocery store turned music shop. Working as a repair tech while his business partner and friend, David Kessner, ran the front, Smith quickly gained a reputation with the local San Francisco Bay Area musicians. This reputation brought him business from bands including the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and Carlos Santana.

In 1969, Smith, as a joke, modified Barry Melton's Fender Princeton amplifier. He removed the standard 10-inch speaker and modified the chassis to fit the larger transformers that were needed by the 4-10 (four 10" speakers) tweed Fender Bassman, the circuit that he had added into the tiny 12-watt Princeton. Finally, Mounting a 12-inch JBL D-120, a popular speaker of the time, Smith had created what would be the first Boogie.

Randall Smith, needing to test his creation, took the "hot-rodded" Princeton into the front store, where Carlos Santana was present. Santana "wailed through that little amp until people were blocking the sidewalk". Impressed, Santana exclaimed to Smith, "Man, that little thing really boogies!" It was this statement that brought the Boogie name to fruition.

The MESA name came about through Smith's other job, rebuilding Mercedes engines and repairing houses. He needed an 'official' sounding name through which to buy Mercedes parts and building supplies, and chose MESA Engineering. It was originally spelled with all capital letters but has been written as Mesa in recent years.

In 1971, Bassist Patrick Burke approached Randall with a proposal for a custom Bass amp. Smith was persuaded and constructed the Snakeskin Mesa 450 - Smith's first bass amplifier and the first official Mesa/Boogie product.

The real breakthrough came when Smith began building a preamp project for Lee Michaels to drive his new Crown DC-300 power amplifiers. Not knowing what signal was required to drive the power amps, Smith added an extra tube gain stage to the preamp, with three variable gain controls at different points in the circuit. In adding this extra gain stage, Smith had created the first high-gain amplifier. He set about designing a guitar amplifier around the new principle, and in 1972 the Mark I was released.

He produced a number of custom variations on the Mark I through the late 1970s, with options including reverb, EQ, various speakers (most often Altec or ElectroVoice), koa wood jointed cabinets, and wicker grill. The Mark II was released in 1978.

In the 1980s, Mesa continued to produce combo and head amplifiers, and began production of rack power and pre-amps, developing power amplifiers such as the M180/190 and Strategy series, as well as pre-amps such as the Quad and Studio. Other models developed in the 1980s included the Mark III, the Son of Boogie, and the Studio .22.

In the 1990s, Mesa launched the smaller Dual Caliber series and the more powerful Rectifier series.

Production of new models has continued into the 2000s, with models such as the Road King II, the Lone Star and Lone Star Special, and the Stiletto and Express lines.