Mission Engineering Announces New Rangefinder Amplifier Technology
New technology on display at NAMM Show 2019 turns a standard guitar speaker into a full range monitor. Allows musicians to connect guitars, mics, keyboards, USB audio to a guitar cabinet and remotely control the response.
ANAHEIM, Calif., Jan. 24, 2019 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Mission Engineering Inc today announced a new guitar amplifier technology that turns regular guitar speakers into full range monitors. The Mission Rangefinder is a powerful amplifier head that works with a favorite guitar speaker cabinet to become a full range monitor for use with modelers, cabinet simulators, pre-amplifiers, keyboards, mics, and acoustic instruments.
Rangefinder looks like a boutique lunchbox style tube head. It's used it in a very similar way, just by placing it on top of the speaker cabinet and connecting with a standard speaker cable. No changes to the guitar speaker cabinet are required. Operation is intuitive for anyone who as ever used a guitar amplifier, no complex setup or programming is required.
There are inputs on the front and rear panels to connect different instruments and devices. Musicians can connect a guitar or keyboard, DI an acoustic instrument or mic, connect outputs from a modeler, pre-amp, or cabinet simulator, or connect a mac or PC via the studio quality internal USB audio interface. Key functions can be operated via controls on the front panel, or remotely via a foot-switch or MIDI controller.
'Most guitar speakers are fairly flat up to about 2KHz. It's mainly above 2KHz that a guitar speaker emphasizes or de-emphasizes particular frequencies to provide its unique characteristics.' Said Mission CEO, and designer James Lebihan. 'Rangefinder works by taking over frequencies above 2KHz and rerouting them to a high frequency driver embedded in the amplifier head itself. This both increases the frequency range up to 20KHz, and allows user control over how much high frequency is present using the Rangefinder knob.'
Rangefinder uses an analog audio path to provide the best quality sound, while using powerful microprocessors for all the management functions. 'There's a lot of technology hidden inside this unit but you would never know it', added James. There's TI amplifiers, XMOS USB audio interfaces, and a dual core ARM Cortex M4, but they handle everything automatically behind the scenes. There's no complicated user interface. All you need to do is plug your guitar in the front, your speaker in the back, and just use it like a regular tube amp, no computer programming degree required'
Rangefinder is on display at the NAMM Show 2019, booth #4453.
SOURCE Mission Engineering Inc
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