New Music Gear Monday: SSL Super 9000 Hardware Channel Strip

Last year SSL introduced its Revival 4000 hardware channel strip to great acclaim. After all, what wasn’t there to like? You got the best of the vintage SSL E-series console sound. While that was perfect for some engineers, others wanted the sound of the more modern J-series and Duality consoles, so SSL has accommodated them with the introduction of the Super 9000 channel strip, featuring all the whistles and bells you’ve come to expect from the latest series of SSL desks.

The Super 9000 channel strip is a 1U 19″ unit designed to fit into any standard rack. Like most channel strips, it has an input preamp, a dynamics section with compressor and gate, a filter section, EQ section, and output section.

Let’s Input

The input section is quite unique in that you can choose between two preamps like on the company’s flagship Duality console. The first is the pristine, high-headroom SuperAnalogue™ preamp for clarity, and the second is what SSL calls Variable Harmonic Drive (VHD). This circuit adds character and saturation with the Drive control, which allows you to dial in 2nd order harmonics for tube-like warmth, or 3rd order harmonics for a harder, transistor-style edge. The Input Flip button allows you to run the line input through the VHD preamp, making it easy to add harmonic color to DAW stems or line-level instruments and sources.

Yes, there’s a mic gain control and line input Trim control, as well as a useful impedance selector, polarity, pad and phantom power switches.

Next comes the dynamics section with a compressor and gate. The compressor has the typical Threshold, Ratio (with a range of 1:1 to ∞:1), and Release controls, along with Peak Detect and Fast Attack mode selectors. The gate has Threshold, Range, Hold and Release controls, and can also be set to act as an expander.

Two Different EQs

The EQ section is four band with parametric mids, but you’re able to choose between the 292 G-Series ‘Pink Knob’ EQ circuit or the 242 E-Series ‘Black Knob’ EQ circuit. The 292 circuit is constant Q, so it’s a bit more surgical than the 242 circuit.

The EQ section also features two buttons labelled E Bell/G-3 and Gx3/E Bell. When in 292 mode, these buttons allow the Low-Mid Frequency to be divided by 3 and the High-Mid Frequency to be multiplied by 3, so that the mid-bands can be used to target frequencies far outside of their standard range. In 242 mode, these buttons switch the Low Frequency and High Frequency bands between Bell and Shelving modes. The EQ can also be placed in the dynamics sidechain, and the High-Pass (18dB/oct) and Low-Pass (12dB/oct) filters can be fully bypassed or routed to input or dynamics sidechain as well.

Finally there’s a output section with routing selections, input mute, insert sections, and an output trim control.

The Super 9000 is priced at $1,999 and is available from pro audio dealers everywhere. You can find out a lot more here.