Oakland's renowned Tiny Telephone Studio loses valuable equipment to burglary
OAKLAND -- Respected independent recording studio Tiny Telephone Oakland has launched a fundraising campaign after recently losing valuable equipment valued at tens of thousands of dollars to burglars, according to the studio's owner.
The studio owned by songwriter and musician John Vanderslice posted photos and information about the burglary on a GoFundMe page. The incident at the studio on the 5700 block of Lowell Street happened early Saturday morning when a group of thieves forced their entry into the facility through two reinforced doors.
The studio lost all of the vintage electric guitars and basses kept onsite as well as several valuable microphones. One of the microphones -- a 1961 Telefunken U47 -- is valued at $38,000, according to Vanderslice. The lost guitars include a 1952 Nash Telecaster, a 1964 Epiphone Texan. a 1967 Gibson SG and an electric Gibson ES125 hollowbody from 1950.
"We are all devastated. These are things we use daily to make music, beloved by the engineers and artists that record at Tiny Telephone," the post on the GoFundMe page read, though Vanderslice noted that no one was injured in the burglary.
The campaign's goal of $70,000 will go towards replacing the lost equipment and providing additional reinforcement of the studio's entrances at a cost of approximately $15,000. As of Wednesday afternoon, the campaign had already raised over $13,000.
Operating in San Francisco since first opening in 1997, Tiny Telephone has long been respected as a place where songwriters and bands can record in a top-quality studio at an affordable daily rate (Vanderslice noted in the post that the studio has had the same $400 day rate for the past decade).
Though the San Francisco location shut down in 2020, notable artists including Death Cab for Cutie, Spoon, Sleater-Kinney, St. Vincent, Deerhoof, and the Mountain Goats recorded there as did many local acts including Shannon and the Clams and Tune-Yards. The Oakland location has been in operation since 2016.