The original designer of the famous Ursa Major Space Station SST-282, Christopher Moore, produces this faithful reissue. The new SST-206 features enhanced versions of SST-282 for lower noise, greater delay, and full frequency response (Audition and echo delay taps). The entire product is about the size of a DVD case and fits in your hand, and has new program "room," highest quality contemporary reverberator, and direct knob interface via 12 potentiometers contributes to ease of use.
The new Ursa Major Space Station SST-206 combines the reissue of the Ursa Major Space Station, a classic reverb and effects unit, with a powerful modern reverberation system in a case smaller than a typical paperback book. Christopher Moore, President of Seven Woods Audio, noted, "There continues to be a high level of interest in the Space Station, as evidenced in Internet studio equipment lists and activity on Ebay." The SST-206, easily held in one hand during operation, is based on a 150MHz 24 bit Motorola DSP chip. The new Space Station measures 6.4 x 4.8 x 0.6 inches, provides AES/EBU digital I/O, and accepts 24 bit audio at 48 or 44.1kHz. It is powered by a small external supply built into the breakout cable and operates from all overseas and domestic AC mains.
Moore recalled, "When I designed the Space Station in 1977, I crafted a unique reverb algorithm and the hardware to support it as a single, organic unit. In designing the new SST-206 Space Station, I used a powerful contemporary 24 bit DSP to replicate the original Space Station sound, complete with simulation of the 12-bit floating point converters, the 7kHz bandwidth, and the artifacts of time modulation." Moore added that he resisted the temptation to change the sound of the original unit, affectionately characterized by some of its users as "garage grunge."
According to Moore, "The reissue offers Space Station enthusiasts a chance to replace their older units with a smaller, more reliable device. Unlike the original Space Station, which was a 3U rack mount product, the entire SST-206 product fits into what appears to be its remote control. "The remote is the reverb," Moore says. "I realized I could now package the entire product in one small box to reduce its cost, and at the same time give users access to every reverb control from the sweet spot at the console. You don’t have to get down on your hands and knees in the dark to adjust this reverb in an equipment rack. In fact, there’s nothing to mount in the rack."
With the power available from the Motorola chip, Moore says that he was unable to resist the temptation to pull out all the stops and render a stunning new reverb program he simply calls "room." The reverberator is controlled by twelve potentiometers that provide instant, intuitive access to all the important parameters. "The SST-206 harkens to an earlier time, before the multi-level menu structure and one-parameter-at-a-time user interface took over. There is no need for an LCD, no user presets, no MIDI–just an uncluttered panel with twelve clearly labeled knobs with pointers to show the current settings." Moore paraphrased Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince, "You know the design is perfect, not when the last feature has been added, but when the last feature has been removed."
Ursa Major entered the market with its Space Station digital reverb and effects unit in May 1978, making it probably the third entrant in the then-young digital reverb market (after the ground-breaking EMT 250 and the Quad Eight CPR-16). The Space Station occupied the lowest cost segment of the market ($1995) for the next three or four years and continued to sell for the next eight years. Christopher Moore was the principal founder of Ursa Major and has personally designed both the original and the new Space Stations. Ursa Major expanded and developed other digital reverb products and in 1986 was purchased by AKG Acoustics, Vienna.
