Mesa Engineering - Randy Smith - NOT cool

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justFred

justFred

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Old story but I just read it and was very disheartened.

Seems like Randy Smith took technology freely available from Leo Fender and Jim Marshall and whoever else shared with him. Even took Leo Fender's cabinet design. Then he Boogied on over to the Patent Office and took out a patent on everything that wasn't nailed down (so the name Mesa Boogie). Next he hired and army of lawyers and set out to file law suits against anyone or anything that even remotely infringed on his booty.

That is the way our system works.

BUT! What a Sh@t that man is. All take and doesn't allow the next generation of amp designers to work off what he developed like he worked off of what LF and JM did. No DIY Mesa Engineering kits for people to build and find mods to share.

Now does this suck or am I just missing something?
 
Re: Mesa Engineering - Randy Smith - NOT cool

Sounds like a businessman doing business to me.
 
Re: Mesa Engineering - Randy Smith - NOT cool

Go play a Mesa amp and let me know how much you care about that story afterwards. He did a lot right and made some of the very best sounding amp in our industry.
The New TC-50 and TC-100 are game changers. Incredible sounding amps. Then try out a JP2C or a Mark V, crazy badass amps.

Fender and Marshall can be argued they set the standard many many years ago. I judge all clean channels on the Fender Twin reverb. Marshall's gain stages are some still to this day held in the highest regard.
Hell my amp currently is a Krank Revolution 1 and they basically just took a Fender Bassman 10 head, gutted modded the hell out of it and called it a new amp. I love my Krank Revolution 1.
 
Re: Mesa Engineering - Randy Smith - NOT cool

Randall basically stole the Soldano SLO design for the Rectifier Series except for a few minor tweaks.

The Genesis of R/C Amp circuits all come from ones that were made/patented 150 years ago.

All the amp builders kinda "borrow" from each other so to speak.
 
Re: Mesa Engineering - Randy Smith - NOT cool

justFred said:
No DIY Mesa Engineering kits for people to build and find mods to share.
Click to expand...

So, you're mad that Randall Smith made it so people couldn't steal his IP and undercut him with cheap knock off products?

You know there's a reason Mesa's still in business, right?

If you dig into the patents instead of believing they first thing you read on the internet you'll find his IP revolves around specialty applications. For example, he didn't patent the presence knob, he patented the switching presence control and timed muting circuit that was specifically developed by Mesa for use in the Dual Rectifier. He's not stoping anyone from selling Fender clones, but he is stoping anyone from flooding the market with cheap Mesa knock-offs.
 
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Re: Mesa Engineering - Randy Smith - NOT cool

mantis said:
Go play a Mesa amp and let me know how much you care about that story afterwards. He did a lot right and made some of the very best sounding amp in our industry.
The New TC-50 and TC-100 are game changers. Incredible sounding amps. Then try out a JP2C or a Mark V, crazy badass amps.

Fender and Marshall can be argued they set the standard many many years ago. I judge all clean channels on the Fender Twin reverb. Marshall's gain stages are some still to this day held in the highest regard.
Hell my amp currently is a Krank Revolution 1 and they basically just took a Fender Bassman 10 head, gutted modded the hell out of it and called it a new amp. I love my Krank Revolution 1.
Click to expand...

Have one now, two before...love it. Just think if you go to the well of common knowledge you should share as those before you shared with you.
 
Re: Mesa Engineering - Randy Smith - NOT cool

some_dude said:
So, you're mad that Randall Smith made it so people couldn't steal his IP and undercut him with cheap knock off products?

You know there's a reason Mesa's still in business, right?

If you dig into the patents instead of believing they first thing you read on the internet you'll find his IP revolves around specialty applications. For example, he didn't patent the presence knob, he patented the switching presence control and timed muting circuit that was specifically developed by Mesa for use in the Dual Rectifier. He's not stoping anyone from selling Fender clones, but he is stoping anyone from flooding the market with cheap Mesa knock-offs.
Click to expand...

They would be in business today either way by being the best and staying ahead of the curve. Remember Betamax and VHS...maybe....
With DIY set free it would probably grow the market, his share included. He's holding on to the boutique imagine and digging have the mystique of IP. That is the BS part of the whole deal.

Bottom line he is just another business man doing business. I prefer his predecessors approach.
 
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Re: Mesa Engineering - Randy Smith - NOT cool

Have never given him a dime. Doubt I ever will. Demo'd a 2C, Mk V, and Dual Rec. Meh...
 
Re: Mesa Engineering - Randy Smith - NOT cool

justFred said:
They would be in business today either way by being the best and staying ahead of the curve. Remember Betamax and VHS...maybe....
With DIY set free it would probably grow the market, his share included. He's holding on to the boutique imagine and digging have the mystique of IP. That is the BS part of the whole deal.

Bottom line he is just another business man doing business. I prefer his predecessors approach.
Click to expand...

His predecessors killed off US/UK jobs so that they could afford to compete against Chinese knock-offs.
 
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Re: Mesa Engineering - Randy Smith - NOT cool

It’s a shame considering he’s contributed almost nothing to the realm of high gain amp tone.
 
Re: Mesa Engineering - Randy Smith - NOT cool

I have less issue with this than Larry Dimarzio slapping a trademark on PAF and double cream humbuckers.
 
Re: Mesa Engineering - Randy Smith - NOT cool

some_dude said:
So, you're mad that Randall Smith made it so people couldn't steal his IP and undercut him with cheap knock off products?.
Click to expand...
You nailed the point I completely missed. Why am I mad: in his own story he puts himself as the struggling friend of all the SF area rock legends, packaging a bassman amp in a Princeton chassis and shoving a 12" speaker in the cabinet and became a legend in his own mind. He stumbled on a stacked preamp circuit and got a second big shot to hang out with the rock stars. So what?
Not mentioned in his story is getting an army of lawyers involved.
That is what makes me mad, lawyers.
 
Re: Mesa Engineering - Randy Smith - NOT cool

This is the DATOTD.

The OP is just more drivel about intellectual property, with little fact. The BOOGIE name has nothing to do with him "boogie-ing" over to the patent office. Laughable!

I suppose if you came up with a better way to build widgets that would make you a ton of money, you'd just hand it out to everyone? Like Jobs, or Gates, or Edison, or Fender, or Peavey, or DUNCAN...or the MILLIONS of creative inventors who've have patented and trademarked their ideas? Even the guy that invented toilet paper PATENTED it! You think Leo and Jim Marshall didn't patent their designs? Do your damn homework!

BTW, Leo's amp design came right out of the Western Electric Handbook, and he modded it and PATENTED his circuits. And the BF cab design has a patent, as does the piggyback head and cab.

Randy's designs were groundbreaking in the '70s and he's still pushing the boundaries. Not bad for a guy who started out building in his garage.

What have you done other than whine and make defamatory slurs about Smith? Where's your MBA? Your EE degree?

Yeah Fred, I'd say your missing something...

Bill
 
Re: Mesa Engineering - Randy Smith - NOT cool

Sure is a lot of anger in this thread for a line of meh sounding amps. I have no idea what patents Boogie holds, but it is not like people are lining up to buy them.
 
Re: Mesa Engineering - Randy Smith - NOT cool

Eh , there's a whole bunch of Mesa knock-off's out there ..anything from a Triple Rec (Liashang or something/Bugera Tri-rec) to a Mark IV (Bugera Magician) the now much-copied Mini-Rec (Panama Shaman/Goldea Demon B), Transatlantic (Goldea Legend D). I don't know how much good those patents really do him..especially in China.
 
Re: Mesa Engineering - Randy Smith - NOT cool

I'll add to what was said upthread; the Fender designs were right out of the tube amp handbook. They got patented. The early Marshalls that are so coveted now were derived directly from the Fender Bassman, just tweaked to use tubes that were more readily available in England at the time. They got patented too. The first Boogie was a hotrodded Bassman with an extra gain stage, true.

But it wasn't just the concept of a hugely loud amp in a tiny little box that Randy gave us. Beginning with the Mk II, he developed several ideas which were radically innovative at the time and have affected nearly all guitars amps since then, including later generations of Marshalls and amps like the Soldanos.

He was the first to build a channel switching amp with a separate master volume for its lead channel. He was the first to build an amp with a graphic EQ in it. And less obviously he developed the idea of adding gain stages after the tone stack, crucial to tighter modern sounds. (This idea soon appeared in the JCM800, among countless others.) I believe he also may have been the first to explore the idea of using fixed EQ in between multiple gain stages to alter the gain character, rather than just to color the tone. Crucial to many modern designs.

When I got my first Mk II back in the 70s, nobody else was building anything like it.
 
Re: Mesa Engineering - Randy Smith - NOT cool

I really dislike it when people try to read a bunch of pro wrestling drama into whatever companies do.
 
Re: Mesa Engineering - Randy Smith - NOT cool

Let's not bash anyone here, no matter if they are here or not. I understand not liking certain business practices, but this sort of started like 'I don't like how he runs his business' to 'He isn't a good guy'. That kind of stuff here is...not cool.
 
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