UREI / United Recording Electronics Industries 565 / 898T Filter Set / "The Little Dipper"

The Little Dipper filter set was introduced at the 1970 AES show in New York, and filled a desperate little niche created in the audio and film production room: the need for the removal of very specific sonic artifacts and anomalies. The Little Dipper has some of the tightest band filters ever made, and is most famous for this incredibly tight 5% Q on its dual-band filters; the Little Dipper can do these tight cuts in a relatively transparent manner. The Little Dipper can also do extremely tight boosts. Six Q settings are available for each band--three for notches, three for peaks. There is also a Range control for the depth of the cut or boost, with coarse and fine controls for frequency selection. In addition to the two band filters, the Little Dipper features 18dB-per-octave high- and lowpass filters, as well as a global Bypass switch. There are two versions: the 565 and 565T. The 565T has an output transformer, allowing balanced output to 600-ohm loads, and it draws an elevated market price.

One of the most interesting nontraditional uses of the Little Dipper is for radical phase sweeps, as the tight Qs and the 20Hz to 20kHz range of the combined filters allow extreme tonality shifts. Both band filters can be used simultaneously for even trippier phase acrobatics.

Note: Unit comes with original operators manual.