Ursa Major StarGate 626
A reverb/delay system with sixteen pre-tuned "rooms" and 256 variations per effect in one box. The pitch was that you'd stop rigging all day and de-bugging all night.
Overview
The StarGate 626 was the expanded flagship of Ursa Major's digital reverb line. The company's own advertising built the pitch around a put-upon engineer and his mad-scientist colleague. The memo-style ads ran in Studio Sound (November 1985, p.112) and again in Mix (December 1985, p.115). They complained that creative sound processing meant a full day rigging gear and a full night chasing bugs. Then they offered the 626 as the cure: digital reverb, delays, and special effects "inside one box with one set of controls." That's marketing copy, not a verdict, but it shows the design intent. The box was meant to replace a pile of outboard.
The 626 did more than straight reverb. The advertising and product notices describe mono and stereo delay lines, a "reverse reverb" effect, a stereoized dual echo, and a plate simulation the copywriter called the brightest he'd heard. The headline number is the program count: 16 pre-tuned "rooms" in all, with 256 possible variations on each effect. The same advertising says the reverb programs were voiced to the same professional standard as the rest of the Ursa Major range. That's the manufacturer talking, so weigh it accordingly.
The 626 wasn't a clean-sheet design. It was an evolution of the StarGate 323. Studio Sound's new-products column (July 1985, p.46) described it as an improved version of the 323, adding eight new reverb and delay programs on top of what the 323 already did. The company's own line-up listing in Studio Sound (October 1985) put it plainly: the 626 gives all the facilities of the 323 plus 8 extra reverb and delay programs, which greatly expand the unit's range of applications. The 323 was the compact, simple-to-use member of the family, with eight preset programs, wide adjustment of pre-delay and RT60, and continuously-variable high and low filters. The 626 is the same instrument with a second bank of effects bolted on.
Ursa Major built a small, focused range of digital signal processors around that design. The period material names the StarGate 323 and 8X32 reverberators and the MSP-126 multi-tap stereo processor as siblings, and the 626 sat as the reverb/delay system among them. The company was based in Boston, and its UK distribution ran through ITA, which is why the British press carried the ads and the new-product notices. The unit turns up in studio gear lists of the period, too. A Mix studio directory (May 1989) lists a StarGate 626 among the echo, reverb and delay systems at Widener University's recording studio, alongside Lexicon PCM-70s and a Yamaha REV7. Later, an EQ magazine studio profile of Electrokitty Recording in Seattle lists the 626 in its effects rack next to a Lexicon 480L and an Eventide H-3000. So the box stayed in working rooms well past its introduction.
The period record documents what the 626 does and where it was used, but it is thin on the things a buyer wants to know. There's no confirmed production run, no original price, no measured frequency response or converter specs, and no independent bench review to separate the ad copy from reality. What survives is essentially the manufacturer's own description and a handful of studio credits. Treat the "brightest plate" and "absolutely professional" language as advertising. The program count, 16 rooms and 256 variations each, is the one hard, repeated claim worth relying on. For a piece of mid-1980s digital outboard, that's a small paper trail.
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