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Mesa Boogie Amps

Mesa/Boogie was established in 1969 by Randall Smith and David Kessner, who set out to create hand-built custom vacuum tube amplifiers for guitar and bass. Smith's first venture was to customise a Fender Princeton. He did this by replacing the speaker with a 12-inch JBL D-120 and modifying the chassis to fit Fender Bassman transformers. An impressed Carlos Santana declared "Man, that little thing really boogies" and the name stuck.

Santana and Keith Richards were two high profile players whose early endorsement of Mesa/Boogie amplifiers helped the company gain ground in the high-end guitar amp market. These days, models like the Dual Rectifier define the sound of modern heavy music.

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