Is Randall Smith no longer with Mesa?

  • Thread starter Thread starter IIBornotIIB
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justin said:
I thought this too. I was told by two dealers. One who talked to a well known rep last week that he was fired. He has a 1 year non compete agreement (may not be enforceable) and was told by the other dealer, (whose source I’m not familiar with) that John Petrucci is aware and is very upset. I was told by this dealer that there could be a mass walkout at Boogie. The other dealer told me that Gibson could probably weather this but when I mentioned the mass walkout rumor to him he said that that would pose a problem even if it was just certain other key personnel. Was also told that Randall Smith has communicated to some that he will start up another amp company and stick it to Gibson as soon as possible. He be angry.

Could it be fiction? Maybe. I’m very confident Randall Smith was fired last week. The other stuff is from the dealer whose source I’m not familiar with. I tend to believe it though.
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Imagine Randall starting a company and making a perfect 2c+ reissue. Gibson would shit themselves 😂
 
VESmedic said:
This is not a rumor at all, I don’t know how else to say it, I’ve seen the amp with my own eyes lol. Like, on a cab, next to the chrome chassis rev G model that’s coming out as well. They exist and it’s for sure a thing, this is not speculation or rumor.
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no i meant him getting fired at all. all i'm reading is "i heards".
 
So, I’m the OP and brought this thread up, as I read (buried in another unrelated recent thread that had “Mark VII” in its title) that Randall was fired. I couldn’t find any news about it. So, I thought I’d raise it up to RT to see if anyone had some insights to share. I thought about texting Mike B and asking him, but: 1.) I don’t think it’s fair to intrude on his personal time when not related to my amp he might be working on, and, 2.) IME, he doesn’t like getting into the weeds on the corporate goings on.

If there is a IIC+ reissue,I think most of us suspect it’s only a Gibson money grab. If it launches, OG’s may take a bit of a hit in value, only to rise again once the reissues prove not to deliver. Someone said in a previous post that the OG IIC+ is not a true 2-channel amp…. It can be with the V1 (Petrucci) mod.

If this all turns out to be non-sense, mea culpa…. when I read what I did in the other thread, I felt it ought to be surfaced, to get more insight.
 
CrystalSky said:
All their amps from now on will feature “Diversity” and “Inclusivity” controls on them, and one of the speaker jacks would be a “male” one sticking outside, with “identifies as a female” engraved on the shaft 😂
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So gay lol
 
CrystalSky said:
All their amps from now on will feature “Diversity” and “Inclusivity” controls on them, and one of the speaker jacks would be a “male” one sticking outside, with “identifies as a female” engraved on the shaft 😂
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I think the ultimate version might be 1 input Jack (labeled “they/them”), no knobs (perfect as I am) and one speaker out (labeled “My Truth”).
 
Ok so I'll post the only actual evidence... lol

So I captured this back on Oct 30, 2023. It is a new two-channel Recto model sitting on top of a cab. If you zoom in you can see they have hand written the control names in silver sharpie. I called my Sweetwater rep, who is awesome and always has the inside scoop, and he told me he inquired with Mesa about this. They said that it's a new amp but couldn't disclose any details, but that a lot of times they put new models in existing formats/headshells as prototypes.

Guess that was BS. Looking forward to the reissue! Haha.


IMG_5351.JPG
 
shar-vell Dan said:
Likely because RS leaving wasn't on good terms with Gibson.
I sold all my Boogies after Mesa sold. Seen it a mile away.
If anyone actually thinks Gibson is capable of producing & servicing amplifires, buckle up.
I would go a step further and bet Gibson is not or did not live up to the terms of the sale hence Smith aint gonna put his name on Gibsons bullshit.
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You really showed them.
 
If Gibson wanted to go full corporate cutthroat psychopath and offer something really interesting, they'd get a couple Hermansson or Ground Zero modded Rectos and steal the Tight knob circuits to add to their own Rectos.

Almost everybody who owns a Recto uses something that both boosts the input level and cuts low end at the input through some pedal or another anyway, might as well add a control that lets you dial in that kind of a sound as a baked-in feature of the amp.
 
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