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Mesa Boogie Factory Tour
Mesa Boogie Factory Tour…
My Mesa Boogie 400+, all tube bass amp, had a rough go of it at a recent gig. I was playing at a very remote location high up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains – a location so remote that the band was shuttled in by helicopter. All electrical power was provided by a large diesel generator, which is shunted to a distribution box to provide 120 volts or 250 volts – depending on your need. To make a long and painful story a little shorter (but just as painful) my amplifier was somehow plugged into a 250 volt outlet – hence the visit to the Mesa Boogie Factory.
Acknowledgement
I would like to take a moment to acknowledge and thank all the staff and management that I met while visiting the Mesa Boogie factory. Everyone I met was genuinely friendly, knowledgeable, and more than willing to provide me with information and assistance. I did not have an appointment for a tour and was amazed at their willingness to have staff interrupt their busy schedules to provide me with access to their facilities and to let me play around with their newest all tube bass amps.
The Facility
The Mesa Boogie factory is located in an unassuming business/industrial park in Petaluma, California. It is basically a very large warehouse that is divided into many working spaces, some of which are office sized and many very large spaces devoted to manufacturing amplifiers and speaker cabinets. While the production of Mesa Boogie products is in an ordinary looking building, the processes used are anything but ordinary in this day and age. All Mesa Boogie products are completely made in the USA and all amps are hand wired. While I was on the tour, we ran into Randall Smith, the founder and CEO of Mesa Boogie. Mr. Smith came across as a warm, engaging individual who is completely immersed in ensuring that Mesa Boogie maintains the highest standards and values – with the end product of high quality tone being the paramount target.
The Tour
The first stop on the tour was “The Pit” – a small room that contains all the prototype amplifier designs of founder Randall Smith.
This little room is basically an active museum for all things Mesa Boogie. The shelves are stacked full of early versions of Mesa Boogie Amplifier prototypes. This room is a little dusty and reeks of Mojo – very cool!
Walking into the factory proper, the first large piece of machinery is the Auto Assembly Machine. All of the smaller electronic components are inserted by this machine into a printed circuit board, where they are also soldered into place.
Live technicians take to circuit boards from this point forward and quality check them visually for any defects that may need attention and then the boards are hand wired and the larger components are added.
Each board then receives more quality control tests with the components fired up and various electronic tests are run. Each chassis is struck several times with a hammer handle to make sure it can handle some abuse and that everything is tight and working as it should.
The amp then gets a first sound check to make sure it’s sounding as it should.
The amps are then are put through the “Burn-in” where they are left on for a minimum of 24 hours and then cycled on and off a few times to make sure they can take some abuse.
After the amp successfully completes the Burn-in, it is taken behind another set of sound muffled doors and then subjected to a final play test by another lucky Mesa Boogie employee.
After all this, the folks at Mesa Boogie have even developed there own special packing molds to safeguard the amps on their shipping journey to a store near you.
Mesa Boogie also has an impressive carpentry shop in the same facility where all of their speaker cabinets are produced. As with everything else here, they tend to blend hi-tech processes followed up with a hands-on approach to the finish work. In this case, Mesa Boogie takes Baltic Birch plywood and makes all their initial cuts, routes and joinery using computer controlled routers on mechanized benches.
They then hand sand and assemble the cabinets. The next stage is to paint and then follow up by wrapping the cabinet in a wide choice of coverings.
On request, Mesa Boogie also produces speaker cabinets from many other varieties of wood.
As a final treat of ice cream piled on top of a huge chocolate cake, tehy took me upstairs and let me play around with the Walkabout, the new all-tube line-up of the Bass Prodigy and the Bass Strategy amps! These new all tube amps really have some girth to give your bass playing some added authority when laying down the low end!
I didn’t want to leave, but the musician’s version of the Willy Wonka Chocolate factory had work to do… and I still had the drive home through some bay area traffic ahead of me!
Thanks again to all the folks at Mesa Boogie who let me peek behind the curtain and see the magic first hand.
For more information on Mesa Boogie products, go to mesaboogie.com
Bass CDs
New Album: Jake Leckie, Planter of Seeds
Bassist Jake Leckie and The Guide Trio Unveil New Album Planter of Seeds,
to be released on June 7, 2024
Planter of Seeds is bassist/composer Jake Leckie’s third release as a bandleader and explores what beauty can come tomorrow from the seeds we plant today.
What are we putting in the ground? What are we building? What is the village we want to bring our children up in? At the core of the ensemble is The Guide Trio, his working band with guitarist Nadav Peled and drummer Beth Goodfellow, who played on Leckie’s second album, The Guide, a rootsy funky acoustic analog folk-jazz recording released on Ropeadope records in 2022. For Planter of Seeds, the ensemble is augmented by Cathlene Pineda (piano), Randal Fisher (tenor saxophone), and Darius Christian (trombone), who infuse freedom and soul into the already tightly established ensemble.
Eight original compositions were pristinely recorded live off the floor of Studio 3 at East West Studios in Hollywood CA, and mastered by A.T. Michael MacDonald. The cover art is by internationally acclaimed visual artist Wayne White. Whereas his previous work has been compared to Charles Mingus, and Keith Jarrett’s American Quartet with Charlie Haden, Leckie’s new collection sits comfortably between the funky odd time signatures of the Dave Holland Quintet and the modern folk-jazz of the Brian Blade Fellowship Band with a respectful nod towards the late 1950s classic recordings of Ahmad Jamal and Miles Davis.
The title track, “Planter of Seeds,” is dedicated to a close family friend, who was originally from Trinidad, and whenever she visited family or friends at their homes, without anyone knowing, she would plant seeds she kept in her pocket in their gardens, so the next season beautiful flowers would pop up. It was a small altruistic anonymous act of kindness that brought just a little more beauty into the world. The rhythm is a tribute to Ahmad Jamal, who we also lost around the same time, and whose theme song Poinciana is about a tree from the Caribbean.
“Big Sur Jade” was written on a trip Leckie took with his wife to Big Sur, CA, and is a celebration of his family and community. This swinging 5/4 blues opens with an unaccompanied bass solo, and gives an opportunity for each of the musicians to share their improvisational voices. “Clear Skies” is a cathartic up-tempo release of collective creative energies in fiery improvisational freedom. “The Aquatic Uncle” features Randal Fisher’s saxophone and is named after an Italo Calvino short story which contemplates if one can embrace the new ways while being in tune with tradition. In ancient times, before a rudder, the Starboard side of the ship was where it was steered from with a steering oar. In this meditative quartet performance, the bass is like the steering oar of the ensemble: it can control the direction of the music, and when things begin to unravel or become unhinged, a simple pedal note keeps everything grounded.
The two trio tunes on the album are proof that the establishment of his consistent working band The Guide Trio has been a fruitful collaboration. “Santa Teresa”, a bouncy samba-blues in ? time, embodies the winding streets and stairways of the bohemian neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro it is named for. The swampy drum feel on “String Song” pays homage to Levon Helm of The Band, a group where you can’t always tell who wrote the song or who the bandleader is, proving that the sum is greater than the individual parts. Early jazz reflected egalitarianism in collective improvisation, and this group dynamic is an expression of that kind of inclusivity and democracy.
“The Daughters of the Moon” rounds out the album, putting book ends on the naturalist themes. This composition is named after magical surrealist Italo Calvino’s short story about consumerism, in which a mythical modern society that values only buying shiny new things throws away the moon like it is a piece of garbage and the daughters of the moon save it and resurrect it. It’s an eco-feminist take on how women are going to save the world. Pineda’s piano outro is a hauntingly beautiful lunar voyage, blinding us with love. Leckie dedicates this song to his daughter: “My hope is that my daughter becomes a daughter of the moon, helping to make the world a more beautiful and verdant place to live.”
Bass CDs
Debut Album: Nate Sabat, Bass Fiddler
In a thrilling solo debut, bassist Nate Sabat combines instrumental virtuosity with a songwriter’s heart on Bass Fiddler…
The upright bass and the human voice. Two essential musical instruments, one with roots in 15th century Europe, the other as old as humanity itself.
On Bass Fiddler (Adhyâropa Records ÂR00057), the debut album from Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter and bass virtuoso Nate Sabat, the scope is narrowed down a bit. Drawing from the rich and thriving tradition of American folk music, Sabat delivers expertly crafted original songs and choice covers with the upright bass as his lone tool for accompaniment.
The concept was born a decade ago when Sabat began studying with the legendary old-time fiddler Bruce Molsky at Berklee College of Music. “One of Bruce’s specialties is singing and playing fiddle at the same time. The second I heard it I was hooked,” recalls Sabat. “I thought, how can I do this on the bass?” From there, he was off to the races, arranging original and traditional material with Molsky as his guide. “Fast forward to 2020, and I — like so many other musicians — was thinking of how to best spend my time. I sat down with the goal of writing some new songs and arranging some new covers, and an entire record came out.” When the time came to make the album, it was evident that Molsky would be the ideal producer. Sabat asked him if he’d be interested, and luckily he was. “What an inspiration to work with an artist like Nate,” says Molsky. “Right at the beginning, he came to this project with a strong, personal and unique vision. Plus he had the guts to try for a complete and compelling cycle of music with nothing but a bass and a voice. You’ll hear right away that it’s engaging, sometimes serious, sometimes fun, and beautifully thought out from top to bottom.”
While this record is, at its core, a folk music album, Sabat uses the term broadly. Some tracks lean more rock (‘In the Shade’), some more pop (‘White Marble’, ‘Rabid Thoughts’), some more jazz (‘Fade Away’), but the setting ties them all together. “There’s something inherently folksy about a musician singing songs with their instrument, no matter the influences behind the compositions themselves,” Sabat notes. To be sure, there are plenty of folk songs (‘Louise’ ‘Sometimes’, ‘Eli’) and fiddling (‘Year of the Ox’) to be had here — the folk music fan won’t go hungry. There’s a healthy dose of bluegrass too (‘Orphan Annie’, ‘Lonesome Night’), clean and simple, the way Mr. Bill Monroe intended.
All in all, this album shines a light on an instrument that often goes overlooked in the folk music world, enveloping the listener in its myriad sounds, textures, and colors. “There’s nothing I love more than playing the upright bass,” exclaims Sabat. “My hope is that listeners take the time to sit with this album front to back — I want them to take in the full scope of the work. I have a feeling they’ll hear something they haven’t heard before.”
Available online at natesabat.bandcamp.com/album/walking-away
Gear News
New Gear: Esopus Guitars Launches New Acoustic/Electric Bass
Esopus Guitars Launches New Acoustic/Electric Bass…
Esopus Guitars is proud to announce the new “Tailwater” bass guitar, from legendary bass luthier Stuart Spector. This 32” scale bass is handcrafted by Stuart using the only finest woods and components at the Esopus Guitar workshop located near Woodstock NY in the Catskill Mountains.
From its fully carved spruce top (the top is carved on both its exterior and interior surfaces) with a thumb rest that is elegantly carved into the top, to its custom-made Fishman piezo pickup and super hard Carnauba wax finish, every detail of the Tailwater is part of creating the ultimate playing experience.
The Tailwater bass features a fully chambered spruce over alder body (15.5″ lower body bout width, 2.25″ body thickness measuring from the peak of the carved top) that delivers a super comfortable tonal tool for all your low-end needs.
Each Tailwater bass is hand-signed and numbered on the back of the peghead by Stuart Spector. A very limited number of Tailwater basses are handcrafted each year at the Esopus workshop.
“I am proud to present the Tailwater bass, a bass that I have spent the last three years perfecting. The Tailwater is a culmination of all of my 45 years of experience, knowledge, and passion for bass guitar crafting. I am so eager to hear what fellow musicians create with this exciting new instrument.” -Stuart Spector
Direct Pricing : $4995.00 plus options.
For more information about Esopus Guitars and Stuart Spector’s handcrafted instruments, visit www.EsopusGuitars.com.
Bass Videos
Tour Touch Base (Bass) with Ian Allison
Ian Allison Bassist extreme…
Most recently Ian has spent the last seven years touring nationally as part of Eric Hutchinson and The Believers, sharing stages with acts like Kelly Clarkson, Pentatonix, Rachel Platten, Matt Nathanson, Phillip Phillips, and Cory Wong playing venues such as Radio City Music Hall, The Staples Center and The Xcel Center in St. Paul, MN.
I had a chance to meet up with him at the Sellersville Theater in Eastern Pennsylvania to catch up on everything bass. Visit online at ianmartinallison.com/
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