Sergio Montanari’s amplifiers.

Montarbo’s founding date depends on which version of its own website you read. Its site from 2003 to 2012 said that “back in the early fifties… Sergio Montanari started to build his first sound amplification systems, at first under the name ‘Super MB’, later ‘Montarbo’,” and that “our trademark… was introduced in 1962.” In 2012 the company celebrated its 50th birthday, counting from that trademark. Its current site says “Founded in 1960 by Sergio Montanari.” We give all three and do not choose; we found no registration record for the 1962 trademark.

The company was based near Bologna; in 2010 it was Montarbo s.r.l., at Cadriano, in the municipality of Granarolo dell’Emilia, north-east of the city. By 2012 the legal company had changed, to Elettronica Montarbo srl.

Montarbo makes strong claims about its early products. It describes a portable case-mixer with six channels, a 100-watt amplifier and a “magnetic-memory” echo unit that it says was a Montarbo patent, “patented worldwide”; we found no patent number. It says that in 1965 it made “the first self-powered speaker enclosures,” with built-in amplifiers, and later quadraphonic — four-channel — mixers, bass amplifiers with separate heads and, in the early 1980s, “software-assisted effects processors.” A 2022 version of its site dates the first portable six-channel mixer to the mid-1960s. We give these as the company’s claims, including its claim to have been first.

From EKO to RCF.

Montarbo has changed hands. By 2012–13 its website footer read “Elettronica Montarbo srl… Company under the control of Eko Music Group Spa,” whose name it shares with the guitar maker EKO, and in 2019 “Montarbo is part of Eko Music Group SpA,” of Montelupone in the Marche — the town where the EKO guitar business, now Algam Eko, also has its address. We could not find when Eko took control, or how Eko Music Group relates to today’s Algam Eko.

Then it joined RCF Group. In May 2020 Montarbo’s homepage announced that, “following the acquisition of Montarbo by RCF Group, Bologna based company AEB Industriale, an integral part of the group and mainly known for its brand dBTechnologies, starting from 10 January 2020 is fully in charge of Montarbo brand.” Today its site says Montarbo is part of AEB Industriale, at Valsamoggia near Bologna. AEB was founded by Arturo Vicari, who also leads RCF Group, and has a 10,000-square-metre headquarters; dBTechnologies dates the purchase to the end of 2019. RCF Group had about 700 staff and €183 million in pro forma revenue in 2018, Il Sole 24 Ore reported; RCF itself had been owned by the American company Mackie Designs from 1998 to 2003. The montarbo.it address now redirects to montarbo.com.

Its exports grew by its own account, from “50 countries” in 2012 to “70 countries” in 2017. Its range now covers point-source speakers, line arrays and stage monitors; in 2022 it included the Wind Pro, Earth Pro, R and B series. We found no staff or revenue figures for Montarbo on its own.

The groups.

Italian professional audio has been consolidating into groups. RCF Group of Reggio Emilia, which also owns dBTechnologies, bought the American loudspeaker maker EAW and the Danish microphone maker DPA in 2018–19 and the Italian PA brand Montarbo in 2019; in 2019, according to Il Sole 24 Ore, it had about 700 staff, exported 87 per cent of its sales and planned a stock-market listing it later withdrew.

A second cluster has formed around Florence. The amplifier maker Powersoft of Scandicci, listed in Milan since December 2018, bought 51 per cent of the loudspeaker maker K-array of Scarperia in 2025, on an enterprise value of €50 million, with the deal announcement stressing the two companies’ “territorial proximity.” Nearby, the listed transducer maker B&C Speakers, founded in Florence in 1946, reported revenue of €100.4 million in 2024 and has bought Eighteen Sound of Reggio Emilia and Eminence of Kentucky, according to Italian Wikipedia.

The groups reach well beyond Italy. RCF Group’s EAW is American and DPA Danish; Powersoft has a subsidiary in New Jersey and earned 44.2 per cent of its 2025 revenue in North America; and B&C Speakers, listed in Milan since 2007, bought Eminence Speaker of Kentucky in September 2023 and its operations in Dongguan, China, that December, according to Italian Wikipedia.

Ownership has moved between these firms as well as into them. Montarbo, the Bologna PA maker, was controlled by Eko Music Group of Montelupone, in the Marche, by 2012, and passed to RCF Group’s AEB Industriale in January 2020. FBT of Recanati, founded in 1963, is controlled by a holding company that bears the name of Vinicio Tanoni, and Proel of the Abruzzo was founded in 1991 by Fabrizio Sorbi, who started with cables. Each company describes where its products are designed and made in its own words, and the guides below quote them.

Montarbo has belonged to both kinds of owner: first a Marche instrument group, then the RCF group of Reggio Emilia.

A mark by Walter Hergenröther.

Montarbo names the designer of its mark, which is unusual in the records we checked for this guide. Its 2010 history said its trademark was “designed by Walter Hergenröther (Bologna) and published in international graphic design books in Italy, United States and Japan.” In 2012 the company marked its 50th birthday “with a new look.” Its current website uses the Manrope typeface.

On manufacturing, its 2012 and 2017 sites said its “R&D department is also located in Bologna” and called the brand “Montarbo made in Italy”; the current site speaks of “distinctive Italian design” and makes no explicit claim about where its products are made, so we make none.

For a design guide, Montarbo shows a heritage mark that has outlasted two changes of owner. Compare dBTechnologies, its sister brand inside AEB Industriale, and EKO, the guitar brand of Montelupone, where its former owner was based. We say plainly that Montanari’s company is now part of RCF Group. For this guide we use a slate and an amber with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Montarbo’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.