band Martha's Laundry. While playing a gig, keyboardist Dave Kessner's amp failed, and after Smith successfully repaired it, an impressed Kessner proposed opening a music store together with Smith as the repairman. They opened Prune Music in 1967, inside a building that had been a Chinese grocery store. Smith's clientele included area bands like the Steve Miller Band, the Grateful Dead, and Jefferson Airplane. Offshoots of Prune Music continue in Berkeley to this day with Subway Guitars, Sam Cohen (aka Fat Dog) and Guitar Resurrection in Austin, TX with former Martha's Laundry guitarist, Jim Lehman (aka Lizard Slim). They were partners until 1975. History of Mesa/Boogie Name Mesa/Boogie began with a practical joke when Smith was commissioned to secretly convert the 20-watt Fender Princeton of a local guitarist into a significantly louder 100-watt amp without altering its appearance. He accomplished this by replacing the amplifier section with that of a Fender Bassman and replacing the 10-inch speaker with a 12-inch speaker. To ensure the joke would work, Smith asked Carlos Santana, a customer at Prune Music, to demo the amp. Despite initial skepticism at the sight of the seemingly stock amplifier, Santana played it and was impressed, exclaiming, "Man, that amp really boogies!" The "Mesa" name came about through Smith's other job, rebuilding Mercedes engines. Smith decided to set up Mesa Engineering so he could purchase wholesale parts for amps and engines. He needed an official sounding name through which to buy Mercedes parts and building supplies, and chose Mesa Engineering. The 1970s and the Princeton Boogie 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, in what is now called a "cascaded" design. The amount of gain produced surprised both men, and Smith combined the cascaded design with the small form factor of the Fender Princeton, creating the first high-gain amp, the "Princeton Boogie." Released in 1972, the Boogies solved the issue of amps not having enough gain to sustain notes at volumes suitable for smaller venues. An early customer, Santana took a snakeskin-covered model to a jam session with Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones at Madison