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LOCATED TWO HOURS FROM ROME IN THE BEAUTIFUL

coastal town of San Giovanni Teatino, with the ocean at the east and winter ski mountains to the west, lies the headquarters for Markbass. The state-of-the-art facilities spare no expense on technology, tools, design, and comfort for its factory employees, which is all part of the family-first mentality of owner and Markbass creator Marco De Virgiliis. An innovator on many fronts, De Virgiliis began his career study-ing electronic engineering, which led to him creating bass amp designs on the side while working in telecommunications. After launching his first short-lived company, Parsek, he was brought on to build amps for Ernie

Ball Music Man for a brief stint in the ’90s. He soon decided he wanted to do things his way and see his own vision take form. In 2001, nearly broke, De Virgiliis—a life-long horn player who dabbles on bass—was forced to sell his beloved saxophone in order to gain funding to create his own amp company, Markbass.

Early on, De Virgiliis relied on his breakthrough use of neodymium speakers and shrinking the size and weight of heads with Class-D amps, which led to a rapid expansion and the need to move to the company’s current, larger factory space. Before he knew it, De Virgiliis had a loyal following of Markbass users, which is still growing. As of today, accom-plished players are flocking to get his amps and join his roster, which includes greats such as Marcus Miller, Stu Hamm, Richard Bona, Michael Manring, Hadrien Feraud, Michael League, Jeff Berlin, Mark Egan,

Randy Jackson, Alain Caron, and Robbie Shakespeare.

Currently, Markbass pro-duces and ships out over 4,000 amps per month, in all sizes and configurations. While some hardware parts are con-structed and shipped back from Indonesia, the Markbass team assembles each amp’s circuitry by hand. Every unit

goes through rigorous mechanical and performance testing before being approved to ship. Priding their product on using only the best and most durable materials, Markbass employs only two repair engineers to work on defective or broken amps. While the company offers extensive war-ranties and remarkable customer service, the two employees typically don’t have much work on their hands. “We don’t have many amps come back for repairs,” explains De Virgiliis. “But when we do, we try to fix and return them within 24 hours. We don’t like to keep our players waiting.”

The factory itself sprawls through an abundance of large rooms and warehouses that include a beautiful music venue with a bar and café, where De Virgiliis’ office is located. Lining the walls are basses from a

huge array of builders. The production f loor is kept immaculately clean, and the workstations are spacious and comfortably equipped. The main warehouse boasts the largest space in the fac-tory, as every boxed order rests there before being shipped. Just off the ship-ping quarters is the market-ing department, where an in-house crew photographs and video-demos amps, and puts together ads for everything on Markbass’

On Your Mark At

We traveled to Italy to see the hands-on work that goes into every Markbass amp.

By Jon D’Auria

The beautiful beach town of Pescara, located minutes from Markbass HQ

The man behind Markbass, CEO and owner Marco De Virgiliis

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The factory’s warehouse entrance in San Giovanni Teatino

The factory’s music venue, complete with bar and café

Marcus Miller’s legendary Jazz Bass, on loan for sound modelingNo shortage of basses in De Virgiliis’ office

One of many parts rooms in the factory

Every circuitboard is assembled and tested in-house. A look inside the assembly wing

Putting the finishing touches on the ampsPhotos continue

growing list of products.At any given time, De Virgiliis

has dozens of new innovations up his sleeve that he and his ten R&D engineers are fine-tuning before his yearly unveilings at Winter NAMM. On this visit alone, we previewed about ten items (sorry, we can’t reveal them). Furthering music technol-ogy, pushing the science of amplifi-cation, and keeping his work family happy is everything to De Virgiliis—and seeing his operation firsthand, it’s evident that his success goes far beyond sales numbers.

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F M A R K B A S S F A C T O R Y T O U R

What Italian amp factory is complete without a custom Ducati? Ads and promos are created in the marketing wing.

The boxing process Every Markbass amp is shipped from company headquarters.

A device De Virgiliis invented to hand-test every Markbass speaker for quality

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F M A R K B A S S F A C T O R Y T O U R

The new Marcus Miller “Little Marcus” head, com-plete with the spot-on “Millerizer” knob to cop his legendary slap sound

Limited Edition white enclosures Marcus’ amps ready to rock The signature cabinet of Snarky Puppy’s Michael League