So, I'll try to answer your questions and then give y'all a virtual tour.
1. I hear that anyone can get a tour if you arrange it. They don't have a formal tour, per se, and I have no idea what you get to see or who takes you if you arrange an informal tour. I live in Petaluma and have gone by enough times over the year that Debbie, the receptionist, recognizes me, but I have never made it past the reception area informally before.
2. I was there and got to witness the 'star" treatment because my business partner is an artist of theirs and is one of the first five artist endorsers dating back many years. He has known the senior management since time began and is kinda like "family", even though he had never been there. So, they were stoked to see him.
3. We played a TransAtlantic for about 45 minutes to an hour (see below). I am going back next week to play a Mark V. When Doug heard I am a MarkIV player thinking of a V, he and Michael Taylor had me schedule a time to go back next week after hours to play the Mark V.
4. A virtual tour.
When you walk in to reception, to the right is the office staff- accounting clerks and the customer service and artist relations folks. Above the offices is (1) Tube Town, where all the incoming tubes are tested and the keepers are boxed; (2) the Tone Lounge, where Doug West spends his days tweaking tones. We hung with Doug and Dan while they were tweaking tones on something new (I am not going to disclose any specifics on products or things I learned that I would consider confidential). We hung with them and talked speakers- why they use one speaker for all amps, ideas about offering alternatives, etc... They respect Michael James' ears, based on his expertise as a record producer, engineer and mixer, and took to heart his suggestions on speaker alternatives and ideas; (3) Randall's, Dan's and Doug's offices. Sitting outside Randall's office is indeed a snakeskin 1x12 original Boogie combo, "THE ONE".
So, that is basically the office area. The vast majority of the facility is a manufacturing warehouse with what I would say are three different manufacturing areas- Electronics, woodshop and packaging. They have come up with an ingenious manual "roller coaster" track system that moves things along the "line". You start with the only automated part of the process- PCB's go into a large CNC machine that has hundreds of rolls of resistors, caps, and all the electronic bits that feed into it. Basically, you tell the computer which amp it is, and it automatically loads all the bits onto the board. Then the board goes to the second machine, a solder bath, where the PCB runs over a vat of melted solder, soldering all the bits onto the board, and then is washed and cleaned. From there, each board goes on its own little roller coaster cart and is rolled to the electronics area, where real people solder on all the other parts of the circuit, the pots, wiring, etc...... At the end of the line, the circuits are put in a chassis and tubes are installed. Then a tester turns the amp on to make sure that the amps works.. listening for hum without an instrument. The also hit the chassis' with mallets to check for loose connections, tube connections, etc... Also, at this point they create prototypes. As they discover things about a circuit, they may make adjustments on how the wiring is done, and make any adjustments to the process and then recheck to make sure those changes don't affect tone. After the completed chassis passes this area, it goes to burn in, where rack after rack of chassis is left on for 24 hours, then tested again.
At this point, cabinets from the woodworking area roll out on their roller coaster tracks and chassis' are mounted into heads or cabinets. There is a guy in a moveable sound booth, made of heavy carpet. it moves along the roller coaster tracks. Combos slide in through a little window and he wails on the combo, playing guitar, checking for buzzes or any issues now that the chassis is mounted in a cabinet with reverb, etc... He basically does a first pass check for buzzes and solidity (is that a word?). Those that pass then go to final play test, to a concrete bunker room and another "product tester" guy play tests every amp before it is boxed. A lot of employees seem to have started with Mesa as product testers, basically playing guitar and checking all the working parts of finished amps for final approval.
In the wood working shop, guys are cutting wood, assembling cabinets (and headshells) and installing tolex and grills. They have special grill cloth stretch machines and guys can crank out properly stretched and mounted grill cloth frames in a hurry. I've done my own and it is a pain. They make it easy. The vinyl guys cut the vinyl in the right pattern, dip the sides of cabinets in a large pan of melted glue (looks like big bars of beeswax before it is melted), and literally roll the cabinet over the vinyl, all four sides. Voila, the tolex is on. They then stretch it, smooth out bubbles, etc.. They work so quickly and efficiently, it is amazing. Stand alone speaker cabinets are subjected to a tone test. Prerecorded chromatic scale starting from Low D (detuned E string). You can hear that **** chromatic scale all day long buzzing up the octave. I would go nuts. We hung out with DeJuan (spelling?) who runs the woodshop. He is THE GUY who makes all hardwood cabinets, in addition to supervising everyone. He loves to pull out all the gorgeous hardwood cabinets and show them off, including his own. He loves his work and is so enthusiastic. For the past 14 or so years, he is the one guy who has done all hardwood finished cabinets.
Anyway, once gear is completed and bagged, it is boxed. The have machines that make their own custom stryo inserts for the boxes. So, the stryo pieces you get that suspend your amp inside the carboard box are also made at Mesa.
Sort of in the middle of the whole place are a couple work areas. One is Mike Bendinelli's. We talked with Mike for a good while. He basically loves working on the older amps and his crazy, crowded workspace is his sacrosanct area. We stood in the doorway. Mike just loves repairing and working on older Marks and is sort of the historian, keeper of the records. He was there long after working hours were over. Next to his area is a room where Marcus does promo and product videos, which is next to another little "lab" area that used to be Randall's, and which he still uses on occasion. Marcus told some hilarious stories about Randall pounding on the wall for him to turn it down and introducing him to Santana as Marco. So, everyone calls Marcus "Marco" now, except Santana, who calls him by his correct name.
They had several prototype TransAtlantic on hand. They say they will begin production in a couple of weeks. The facility produces 70-120 amps a day. We played a TA for about 45 minutes. It definitely is a whole new type of amp for Mesa, so your standard approach to Mesa amps won't work here, but with MIchael Taylor's help, we got some great tones out of it.
We talked with the department head in each area. Each was passionate, enthusiastic and full of information. They didn't make us feel like we were taking away from their work. They all wanted to show us some "cool" thing. The employees all seemed to genuinely enjoy their work and the environment, even those doing tedious assembly line production work.
It was a totally amazing experience.
