A small metalworks between Castelfidardo and Recanati.

Quik Lok, also written Quiklok, comes from the Marche, the region on Italy’s Adriatic coast where Castelfidardo and Recanati have made musical instruments for generations, from accordions to Eko guitars. The brand’s own website today says it was “founded in 1983” and “born in the heart of the Italian music industry, between Castelfidardo and Recanati.” Its account starts with two keyboard stands, the QL/606 and QL/642, and a lever-operated locking disc that set the height in one movement, which the company calls an industry standard.

An older version of the story is preserved on the web. In 2001 the Italian site, quiklok.it, was run by Tam S.r.l. of Recanati, which described itself as “a small dynamic metalwork manufacturing company” and said the fast-locking mechanism called Quik Lok was “invented in the late 1970’s by Tam,” for a keyboard stand with an X-style folding frame. A copy of quiklok.com from January 2000 gives the same Recanati contact for Tam and says the company originated between Recanati and Castelfidardo. So the brand’s two accounts differ by a few years, late 1970s or 1983, and we give both. Neither names a founder, and we could not find one in the sources we checked.

X-frames, a tripod and a chameleon.

Quik Lok’s reputation rests on the keyboard stand. Tam described its “X” style keyboard stands and “A” shaped guitar stands as “the most imitated” in the world; the company today places itself “among the global leaders in keyboard support systems.” We give both as company claims. It dates the DQL/15 microphone stand, a tripod with a curved profile, to the second half of the 1980s, and calls the WS/550 universal stand, which could change length, height and tilt to hold keyboards, mixers, racks or monitors, its high point; it was soon nicknamed “the chameleon,” the company says, and its successor, the WS/650 series, is still sold. In the early 1990s came the QL/691, a folding stand of arc-welded steel tube that the company says could hold any electric guitar or bass on the market; the QL/692 replaced it.

In America the brand reached shops through distributors. A copy of quiklok.com from December 1996 is the home page of Music Industries Corp. of Floral Park, New York, which called Quik Lok “the number one stand line in the country.” In 2009 the site sent buyers to American Music and Sound; in 2013 it carried the name of U.S. Music Corp., “a division of JAM Industries”; and in 2020 its footer read “Quik Lok is a division of JAM USA LLC.” The company has long listed players who use its stands, including Rick Wakeman and Hall and Oates; that list is the company’s. The catalogue has grown well beyond keyboard stands: the company lists microphone stands, benches and stools, music stands, speaker and lighting stands, amplifier and mixer stands, studio furniture and portable stage systems, and its current range includes the DJ233 workstation for DJ equipment, the BS402 steel monitor stand and the BX8 keyboard bench. Today it also makes cables, among them the Sonic Solutions line, which it calls “100% made in Italy.”

Hardware and the stage.

Instrument stands are a quiet trade, and most of the names in it are owned by larger groups. Three of the brands in this set make broad ranges of stands for every instrument. Hercules belongs to KHS Musical Instruments of Taiwan, which says it has existed since 1930 and makes its products in company-owned factories. On-Stage is a division of The Music People of Berlin, Connecticut, which says it was founded in 1979 and is now “an Exertis | JAM business.” König & Meyer says it was founded in 1949 at Wertheim am Main, in Germany, by Karl König and Erich Meyer, and that almost all the metal and plastic parts of its products are made in-house.

Two grew up around keyboards and the stage. Ultimate Support says its founder, Darrell Schoening, built his first A-frame speaker stands in 1977 from salvaged hang-glider tubing; the brand now belongs to ACT Entertainment. Quiklok says it was founded in 1983 between Castelfidardo and Recanati, in Italy’s Marche, and that its first products were the QL/606 and QL/642 keyboard stands.

One is a drum-hardware specialist. Gibraltar was among the percussion brands that Fender’s KMC Music sold to Drum Workshop in January 2015, Music Inc. reported, and it came under Roland when the Japanese company bought DW in 2022, MusicRadar reported.

The last is a wall-hanger maker. String Swing says it was founded in 1987 by Paul Thieman and Anne Tainter, who ran a small dairy farm in Elroy, Wisconsin, and that its entire product line is still made in that state.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From Tam to Eko to Algam.

By 2012 Quik Lok belonged to the Eko group, the Recanati company that Oliviero Pigini founded in 1959 to make guitars, which went bankrupt in the 1980s and was revived by his brother Lamberto, Italian Wikipedia says. A presentation given by the Eko group at the University of Macerata in March 2012 listed Eko Guitars, QuikLok, Opera and Montarbo as the group’s own brands, and said Eko Guitars, QuikLok and Opera were “made in the Far East (China).” Research and development staff in Recanati sent AutoCAD drawings to the manufacturers, it said, and Eko quality-control staff checked finished products in the Chinese factories. The group, which also distributed about 60 international brands in Italy, put its 2011 turnover, including the loudspeaker maker Montarbo, at about €40 million. That is a different picture from the in-house production with welding robots and laser cutting that Tam described in 2001. The current website says products are made on “modern machinery” for welding, shaping and painting, but in the pages we read it does not say where the stands are made; its “made in Italy” claims are for cable lines.

Ownership changed again in 2020. On 2 March that year Eko Music Group transferred its business to the French distributor Algam, creating Algam Eko S.r.l., the Italian music site Musicoff reported, saying the shareholders wanted an international partner for “the globalisation of the Eko and Quik Lok brands.” Algam Eko, based in Recanati with its operations at Montelupone, now names Eko Guitars and Quik Lok as its two own brands, and Algam also makes Pleyel pianos and Lag guitars. The name should not be confused with Milwaukee Tool’s Quik-Lok attachment system for garden tools, which is unrelated.

For a design guide, Quik Lok shows how a single mechanism can carry a brand through several owners. Compare Korg and Yamaha, whose keyboards its stands were built to hold. For this guide we use black, a deep red and steel grey with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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