Timbre Cases, the Fredericton startup dedicated to making the best guitar cases available, announced funding Monday that will finance its final push to get a product into the market.

Founded by music aficionado Peter McMath, Timbre Cases will soon launch the DNone, an upmarket acoustic guitar case that’s aimed at music professionals. McMath said he will soon reveal a few high profile endorsements for the product, but he’s keeping the names under wraps for now.

The release of DNone will foreshadow the release next year of a second product that will target the broader market of guitar players. But the goal of the product remains the same – to protect the instrument and make it convenient for the owner to transport it.

“We’ve been through different phases of our prototyping and this is the last leg of it,” said McMath in an interview. “It’s the final step in our commercialization phase. It’s about product development and the launch of our initial product, the DNone.

Timbre Cases announced Monday that it received a loan of just under $200,000 from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency to help finance this financing. The company on its own has $66,000 from angel investors in the region.

Timbre Cases in December launched a crowdfunding campaign on the Kickstarter website with a target of $30,000. It ended up raising $31,547.

While most of the startups in New Brunswick are in the IT space, McMath set out to join another group of entrepreneurs.  A lifelong music fanatic, he wants to emulate the success of local companies Sabian Cymbals and Los Cabos Drumsticks, which have excelled in the global market for music equipment.

McMath has spent the last two years refining the design and manufacturing process of the cases, and he says the team has dramatically improved the “geometry” of the cases. They include wheels sunken into the body of the case so they don’t break off and a watertight seal. 

“It’s gotten a lot better,” McMath said of the design. “We’ve spent the last two years working with everyone from engineers to designers to musicians. For example, we’ve achieve 63 percent in weight savings.”

The product is manufactured in Canada and the final assembly is carried out in Fredericton.

The plan for the rest of the year is to sell the instruments through an array of distribution channels. The company will sell directly to musicians themselves, through music retailers and in partnership with instrument manufacturers.

A strong goal is to increase sales in key geographic markets, such as the West Coast and in the southern U.S. In the long-term, McMath wants to branch out into cases for other types of musical instruments.

“We’ve really come up with a world class product and so we’re excited about getting out the next generation of cases,” said McMath. “We’ll be able to move into a mid-market product in 2016, but we’re really setting the standard this summer.”