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Mesa/Boogie (also known as Mesa Engineering) is a company in Petaluma, California that manufactures amplifiers for guitars and basses. It has been in operation since 1971. MESA was started by Randall Smith as a small repair shop which modified Fender Amplifiers, particularly the diminutive Fender Princeton. Smith's modifications gave the small amps much more input gain, making them much louder as well as creating a high-gain, distorted guitar tone. Prominent early customers included Carlos Santana, and Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones. Exposure from these top players helped to establish Mesa/Boogie's position on the market, and it is frequently referred to as the first manufacturer of boutique amplifiers. == History == Randall Smith worked as a repair tech in the music shop he co-owned, and Mesa/Boogie began with a practical joke: he borrowed a Fender Princeton (a small 12-watt amplifier) from his friend, Barry Melton of Country Joe and the Fish, and hotrodded it by replacing the amplifier section with that of a Fender Bassman and installing a 12-inch speaker instead of the original 10-inch. The resulting amplifier proved to be loud and successful, and Smith made more than 200 of these Princeton "Boogies"--a name allegedly provided by Carlos Santana,〔 who is to have exclaimed "This thing boogies!" If hot-rodding Fenders was the first breakthrough, the second was developing an extra gain stage for the guitar input. Smith was building a preamplifier for Lee Michaels, who needed a pre-amp to drive his new Crown DC-300 power amplifiers. Smith added an extra tube gain stage to the preamp, with three variable gain controls at different points in the circuit (what is now called a "cascaded" design), creating the first high-gain amplifier. He set about designing a guitar amplifier around the new principle, and in 1972 the Mark I was released.〔 The MESA name came about through Smith's other job, rebuilding Mercedes engines.〔 He needed an 'official' sounding name, through which to buy Mercedes parts and building supplies, and chose MESA Engineering. 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 Electro-Voice), 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. 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. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mesa Boogie」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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