Wally Heider Recording Studio Mug Retro

Wally Heider Studios — San Francisco, 1969–1980

245 Hyde Street, between Turk and Eddy. Wally Heider opened the room in March 1969 in a building that had served as 20th Century Fox's offices and screening rooms, across the street from the Black Hawk jazz club. He'd seen it coming — Bay Area bands like Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and the Grateful Dead had been flying down to LA and New York to track. San Francisco needed its own.

The first record out of Studio C was Jefferson Airplane's Volunteers (1969) — the first album they ever made in their hometown. What followed in the next decade is essentially the canon of the San Francisco sound: Creedence Clearwater Revival cut Cosmo's Factory there in 1970 and named the album after the room. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young recorded Déjà Vu on the floor. The Grateful Dead worked the room enough that they had its doors airbrushed. Harry Nilsson, Steve Miller Band, Santana, and dozens more came through.

Heider built the place properly. Frank DeMedio designed the custom 24-channel console using Universal Audio components, military-grade switches, and a single preamp per channel — a clean, simple signal path that became the studio's sound. Altec 604-Es on McIntosh 275 tube amps for monitoring. Engineers like Bill Halverson, Stephen Barncard, and Glyn Johns ran the rooms.

Heider sold to Filmways in 1978 and stepped back from management in 1980. New owners renamed the building Hyde Street Studios, which is still operating today under different ownership. But the Wally Heider era — those eleven years between '69 and '80 — is its own complete chapter. The room where the San Francisco sound got committed to tape.

245 Hyde Street.

• Ceramic
• 11 oz mug dimensions: 3.8″ (9.6 cm) in height, 3.2″ (8.2 cm) in diameter
• 15 oz mug dimensions: 4.7″ (11.9 cm) in height, 3.3″ (8.5 cm) in diameter
• 20 oz mug dimensions: 4.3″ (10.9 cm) in height, 3.7″ (9.3 cm) in diameter
• Lead and BPA-free material
• Dishwasher and microwave safe
• Blank product sourced from China

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