“You fix it so it won’t break again, then you pound on it some more. Every amp gets the living daylights hammered out of it”: Randall Smith on the origins of his ‘hammer test’ that makes Mesa/Boogies bulletproof
We don’t recommend trying this at home, but it’s a test that has helped Mesa/Boogie amps stand the rigors of touring throughout the decades
(Image credit: Future)
When Mesa/Boogie says its amps are bulletproof, it isn’t a mere marketing ploy: it means it. Now, brand founder Randall Smith has discussed the brutal techniques he pioneered to ensure all Mesa/Boogie amps are built to last.
Back in the late 1960s, Smith proved himself to be a dab hand at fixing broken gear while working at a local music store in Mill Valley, and became known among gear circles for his ability to bring gear back to life.
“In a very short time, all of the Bay Area bands were bringing their gear to us to be prepared,” Smith recalls on his YouTube channel. “That’ll be Country Joe and the Fish, the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane, and dozens of band which you’ve never heard of.”
When Country Joe and the Fish came calling, though, it provided Smith with his biggest test yet.
“Country Joe and the Fish were a pretty big deal at that time,” he says. “As a matter of fact, Led Zeppelin actually opened for them in those days. The guys were really cool. [They] brought a truckload of gear and said, ‘We're going out on the road, I need this stuff made bulletproof because it really takes a beating.’”
At that exact moment, Smith says a Fender Showman amp head fell out of the truck and onto the street, as if to punctuate their point.
“I took that to heart. This stuff does take a hell of a mechanical beating,” Smith reflects. That led him to intuit his now famous hammer test.
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Building Mesa/Boogie Part 1. Founder Randall Smith discuses How Boogie got named. - YouTube
“Which is exactly what the name implies,” he continues. “You turn the amp all the way up and you pound on it with a hammer until something breaks. Then you fix that so that it won’t break again, and you pound on it some more. You continue until that thing is hammer-proof.
“We still do that,” he adds, over half a century later. “Every Mesa/Boogie gets the living daylights hammered out of it.”
The band’s roadies also came to Smith with another request – to modify a Fender Princeton practice amp “so that it just blows [guitarist] Barry Melton’s mind”. That led Smith down a rabbit hole that would sow the seeds for the celebrated amp creations he is now famous for. It was also from this modification that the company also got its unusual ‘Boogie’ name.
A freelance writer with a penchant for music that gets weird, Phil is a regular contributor to Prog, Guitar World, and Total Guitar magazines and is especially keen on shining a light on unknown artists. Outside of the journalism realm, you can find him writing angular riffs in progressive metal band, Prognosis, in which he slings an 8-string Strandberg Boden Original, churning that low string through a variety of tunings. He's also a published author and is currently penning his debut novel which chucks fantasy, mythology and humanity into a great big melting pot.
