Stam Audio SA78+

The UREI 1178 stereo compressor has been for decades the secret weapon of countless renowned engineers around the world for overheads, acoustic guitars, room mics, backing vocals and parallel drum mixes.

After several requests to manufacture this unit, we thought it was time to bring this unit back to life with all premium parts BUT with critical improvements to overcome the “shortcomings” of the original design.

Despite being extremely popular amongst experienced engineers, the UREI 1178 had two major limitations that prevented it from being as popular as their mono sibling, the 1176:

1)The lack of a slower attack time for Mix Buss Duties
Perhaps the most important shortcoming of 1178 was the lack of a slower attack setting to utilize this stereo unit for drum bus and mix bus duties. We grabbed the famous super slow attack mode from 1176AE and added it to the SA-78T Plus at 15ms giving it the perfect attack time to be used on drum bus and mix bus duties. This new feature opens a world of possibilities that were previously impossible while preserving the original audio path and timbre of an old 1178.

2)The lack of a side chain high pass filter
 Music and audio engineering has changed a lot in the past 50 years. With music becoming so bass heavy, it was critical to add a side chain high pass filter to this stereo compressor. We decided to grab the five-position sidechain HPF used on our popular SA-4000 and integrate it into the SA78 giving you 5 different frequency options.

While the SA78 is a glorious sounding unit thanks to its rich output transformers it can be further enhanced by adding back the missing UTC 0-12 input transformer which was replaced by an IC circuit on the 1176 from Rev G onwards. This input transformer was found on the famous 1176 Rev A, D and F and imparts a unique character adding a beautiful coloration, low-end and harmonic distortion taking this unit to a whole new level.

This is also available in: Nederlands (Dutch) Deutsch (German)