treblemaker

i am bassmaker, and so can you

Bassmaker started out of isolation. I was on assignment in China, helping build one of the last rides for Shanghai Disneyland, and what a ride it was. The catch was that I lived in the factory. If you've ever spent a night in a Chinese factory, you know sleep is limited, if not banned outright.

So, like any man doing time, I took up whatever hobbies fit inside the walls. First it was Mandarin lessons, promptly followed by chainsmoking. Then, as a cure for my incessant boredom, a pair of speakers pulled from a scrapyard went into a briefcase that had survived the Cultural Revolution. The first Bassmaker was born.

Living in Guangdong, the factory of the world, meant the people who build the electronics we all use weren't suppliers I had to cold-email. They were my roommates. So I played dumb, asked a lot of questions, and paid my way in loose cigarettes and 白酒.

Friends wanted one. Then friends of friends. That briefcase became a company with three rules: loud enough to matter, tough enough to travel, honest about what's inside. No inflated wattage, no fantasy specs on the box.

Then people started asking if they could put their own logo on it: agencies, festivals, breweries, artists. This is when it became a marketing vehicle.

For four years we pumped these bad boys out, but we also learned from the feedback. New tech made it possible to reduce the size and weight while increasing the power, among other net benefits for v2. Which we childishly dubbed the Treblemaker.

Most branded merch is designed to be thrown away. A Treblemaker is the thing someone carries to the beach five summers running, with your branding on it every time.

We're small, so you talk to the person who actually builds these. If something's wrong, I want to hear it from you directly. Send me your artwork and I'll show you what it looks like on the real thing.

— stew