JBL was one of the earliest and largest manufacturers of speaker components and cabinets. Mark Gander spent 41 years at JBL starting in 1976, with various roles through the years such as Applications Engineer, VP of Marketing, VP of Engineering, and most recently Director of JBL Technology. He is also known as JBL's historian and often just called JBL GURU.

In my opinion, he was one of the most influential and centrally connected people when it comes to speakers, with the largest sound companies in the world. He was directly responsible for marketing, product development, and connecting companies like Clair Bros, Maryland Sound, ShowCo, Stanal Sound, A1 Audio, Schubert Systems, and many more with JBL in the late '70s and early '80s. This was a time when all sound companies had to make their own proprietary systems. Mark has a very unique perspective on our history because he was at the center of the live sound industry. Sound Companies needed a symbiotic relationship with a speaker manufacture to develop, engineer, and design their systems. Mark Gander was the catalyst of that for JBL.

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