This paper describes the design of an event discriminator with a practical dynamic range of at least 2000:1 and its application to measurements in fragmented heavy ion beams. Such beams are formed by particles with a wide range of values of dE/dx and the determination of fragment composition by a simple, portable instrument that can be used under a variety of experimental conditions requires the measurement of the dE/dx of all particles in a single experiment. Histograms of dE/dx vs. residual energy for a 20Ne fragmented beam, showing events with Z ranging from 1 to 10 are shown. Copyright © 1990 by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.