While most of us were admittedly busy designing and building amps and accessories for guitarists and bassists, a couple of us were thinking hard about what we could do for people like keyboard players, solo entertainers, electronic drummers and folks that need PA facilities but can’t lug a complete system. Although guitar and bass sounds are far from being as straight-ahead as they were 20 years ago, the amplification needs for these instruments are still fairly easily defined. When it comes to the above-described applications it’s a whole different ball game. Here, you’re dealing with a tremendously broad range of sounds, whether it’s keyboards or electro-acoustic guitars, possibly with microphones, or a combination of tape, CD, MD or sound card signals and microphones for a presentation. About the only common denominators here are power, precision and flexibility.

At home, in the rehearsal room, on smaller stages or in a conference room or trade show booth, you need an amplification solution that’s compact and light enough to be easily transported and fit in a tight space, yet powerful enough to cut through, precise enough to reproduce your sounds accurately and flexible enough to handle a wide variety of signals. Instrumentalists will also appreciate the KX1200 as a dedicated monitoring system on larger stages, eliminating the need to compromise between hearing themselves and the rest of the band.

With all this in mind, we set out to build a combo that would cover all of these needs in a straight-forward, no-frills fashion, yet offer convincing audio quality and road-proof reliability. With its bass reflex cabinet, specially designed 3-way speaker system and powerful 120-Watt RMS amp, the KX1200 will reproduce just about anything with extreme power, punch and clarity. Four line inputs plus an additional balanced XLR mic input along with basic mixing functions arm you to deal with various signals. Each of its four channels features independent volume and effects send controls for the integrated effects loop. The master section offers an extremely effective and musical active 4-band EQ, a master volume control and a headphones out. The stereo tape I/O enables you to connect stereo signal sources or record your mix with no loss of channel inputs, while the balanced DI out arms you for professional recording applications. And if you should need extra power or dispersion, the main out enables you to connect external power amps and speakers. The KX1200 integrates all of this in an attractive, ruggedly constructed cabinet with rugged black vinyl covering, large chrome steel corners and recessed die-cast handles, to give you a compact, flexible and great-sounding amplification/monitoring system that won’t let you down no matter what’s up.