Wally Heider Studios

Wally Heider Studios

Studio A, Hyde Street Studios (formerly Wally Heider Studios)
Industry	Recording studio
Successor	Hyde Street Studios
Founded	United States (1960s (1960s))
Founder	Wally Heider
Defunct	1980 (1980)
Headquarters	California, United States

Wally Heider Studios was a recording studio in San Francisco, California between 1969 and 1980, started by recording engineer and studio owner Wally Heider.

In 1978, Heider sold the studio and its name to Filmways, but remained as manager until 1980 when Filmways sold it to a partnership composed of Dan Alexander, Tom Sharples, and Michael Ward. The three partners renamed the business Hyde Street Studios, which is still an operating recording studio as of 2013, now owned solely by Michael Ward.

In early 1969, Heider opened Wally Heider's Studio at 245 Hyde Street, San Francisco, between Turk and Eddy Streets, across the street from Black Hawk jazz club, in a building that had previously been used by 20th Century Fox for film offices, screening rooms and storage Heider had reportedly apprenticed as an assistant and mixer at United Western Recorders in Hollywood, CA, with Bill Putnam, The Father of Modern Recording, and he already owned and ran an independent recording studio and remote recording setup called Wally Heider Recording, in Hollywood, California, which was one of the most successful such operations in the world.

Heider and his crew were very well known for making excellent studio and remote location recordings and for top notch engineering. Two years earlier, in 1967, Heider had been involved in live recording at the Monterey Pop Festival. Artists like Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and The Grateful Dead had been recording in Los Angeles and New York, and Heider saw the need for musicians involved in the nascent San Francisco Sound to have their own well equipped and staffed recording studio close to home. The studios were built by Dave Mancini, who later built his own studio in the San Fernando Valley.