I ever enjoyed watching the world from a different point of view… from the bottom end!

Since I was a kid I’ve ever had a passion for imagination. It wasn’t just a passion but a real need to create and design something new, out of normal standards. I attended clarinet classes at the conservatory and I immediately developed a passion for saxophone and I remember when I got my first Selmer Mark VI I used to sleep with it… I realized I had a strong passion for musical instruments and I ever thought anybody buying a musical instrument wasn’t getting just an instrument but a Dream!
In the mean time, since I was a kid, I got into electronic and acoustic and my house was full of speakers and amplifiers, even under my bed…

These two passions, around my 30’s, drove me to turn my passions into a job; at that point I realized I actually had a third passion: BUSINESS ESTABLISHMENT.

NOTHING HAPPENS BY CHANCE: THE CIRCUMSTANCE
Having know-how, desire, experience and being able to suffer is not enough if there’s not a circumstance making the difference; without dwelling too much on this concept, the most important phenomenons of the 60’s, like the Beatles… Besides all their ideas and intuitions, they wouldn’t have been able to do today what they did at that time.
That said, let’s move to my story.
In 1996, beside my passions, I received another strong boost, I mean the fact I didn’t graduate in electronic engineering. For this reason I didn’t have the chance to build my career inside big companies, but I was noticing big mistakes while I was working as an employed. One day I decided to quit my job to start my own brand.
It was exactly the right moment, because there was the right circumstance.
The most popular bass amp brand at the time and all the other brands imitating it had all the same characteristic, I mean they sounded great at the store but they didn’t with the band (I actually played with many bands and many bass players). A big revolution was going on around bass conception because it was turning from an accompaniment instrument, most of the time, to what it is now. New playing techniques were coming out and the instrument itself was developing with a lot of 5 and 6 string basses on production; so bass amps had to follow this new evolution.

I’ve been able to involve into my dreams a small number of persons who shared since the beginning the enthusiasm in a moment where it seemed impossible to even think we would have become one of the first brands in the world in just 15 years.

I wanna say the team power, my bravery and the fire I had inside for what I was doing is something I can’t easily describe. Today we’re around 50 people, but not everybody can understand and totally realize that period where I’ve had a leading role while a dream was turning into reality with huge difficulties. Today it’s hard to explain even to myself how that was possible.
Many people don’t know my first brand was named Parsek, but after a few years of experience it turned into Markbass in 2001.

A DREAM COMES TRUE
In 2001, after collecting all the experiences that still had to bring me to my success, but realizing the right direction to follow, once again we used all our foolishness and bravery to create Markbass.

Since its establishment, in April 2001, it was clear some intuitions made the difference. We’ve been the first using Neodymium when nobody was believing it. Today it looks like there’s only Neodymium!
So we also put on the market new cabinets that not only were delivering what the payoff said: “the real sound of your bass”, but they were 50% lighter than our competitors products. I’ve never thought as an artisan, but I ever thought it was possible to create a factory respecting the handcraft quality while the numbers allowed to access more technologiesand components choices.
A typical example is about Markbass speakers; all the artisans are forced to use “standard” speakers. I was able to havemy own speakers since the first project and I’ve chosen every single parameter…
That made the difference… and it still does.

A DREAM INSIDE THE DREAM
While all these events were happening, my company was becoming a leader brand in the bass amp business and a lot of my musical myths that I’ve ever saw inside other brands booths started becoming not only my endorsers, but real friends as well. We always talk about endorsements in this business but I can be proud of myself for perceiving my relationship with artists in a pretty original way. Every single endorser working with Mark World has first of all a human interaction with me and my team, then they all love my instruments and they’re really involved in the products development, because we share experience and knowledge, being them the real stage leading people. Of course in the beginning I had exclusively Italian endorsers and I’ll be thankful forever to all of them for believing in me and in Markbass sound before it was a worldwide phenomenon.

THE DREAM GOES ON

Today Markbass is without any doubt one of the main brands worldwide watching its numbers and market share, but first of all it inspires respect and passion as we can read on all the emails we receive daily…

Some excerpts from thousands of nice emails we receive from our customers Worldwide.

• Great, thank you and your products are amazing as good as you say they are I have been playing for 35 years and I’m so glad I found Markbass. –G.K. (UK)
• I’m really contacting you to say a few words about your bass amps. I’ve been playing for about 55 years… I’ve been using your amps for about nine years now and I have to say they’re the best amps EVER. So well thought out. The weight, the sound, the compact size all contribute to the perfect amp. I have a CMD 102P and a CMD 121P. I also have a Traveler 151P and a New York 121. And I’m sure I’ll have more on the way.So thank you for making such a wonderful amp.-B.G. (USA
• … wanted to say thank you for making gear that sounds so good, that is so reliable. I’ve owned my Little Mark Bass II, 15” traveller, and 2×10 for 6 years. Simply awesome sound.-S.D. (Canada)
• Thanks so much for taking the time to answer me. I will follow your recommendation… The fact that you took your time of day for a relatively unknown musician like me will stay with me, and I’ll remember your act of kindness. May God bless you and it only makes me see Markbass in an even more positive light. All the best.-J.F. (UK)
• Thank you… Your customer service and response is second to none in this industry. I greatly appreciate all your help with my questions. It make the purchasing decision very easy. Best regards.-J.H. (USA)
• Thank you very much, the response Time of the MB support is extremely short. This Time it was only seconds. Brillant! – M.L. (Germany)
• I am a semi pro and have gigged this amp on 2 occassions since I purchased it and I have to admit, that it is really everything that is said about, having been an Ampeg user for many years, this little amp certainly has blown me away. Thank you Markbass, I cannot say anymore as there is not much left to say, just THANK YOU MARKBASS. – L.R. (UK)
• Hello Mark, thank you so much for your prompt reply. I love the head – I have owned Trace Elliot, Gallien Krueger, SWR and Ampeg, but none of them can match the quality/light weight/power package that your design offers, especially for the heads. You really have made a huge impact in the music bass industry. Thanks for your ingenuity! Sincerely.- A.S. (US)

This is our big plus, we never lost our artisan spirit and our care on a thousand details that maybe nobody sees but that made our success, starting from the way we live our company.

Without losing our focus on two main things as Sterling Ball teached me:
Having focus on products and customers.

DV Mark… And we have other projects developing on other fields, always keeping that need to imagine something different, the real load bearing axis of the whole story. My emotions are renewed every time I see and hear one of my amps on TV, at the movie, etc…

Thanks to all our customers, they are very special for us and for our company.
Every single customer is like the only one in the world!

Anyway, we keep going with our maxim: BORN TO RUN!