Welcome to the Soviet American Sound

Soviet American Audio Systems (SAAS) develops analog studio equipment and microphones inspired by the sound of vintage American-made Sphere consoles and Soviet-made microphones: little-known but highly coveted recording tools that have become nearly impossible to find.  Based in Bloomington, Indiana, SAAS is a partnership between recording engineer and Russian Recording founder Mike Bridavsky, a first-generation American of Russian heritage, and equipment designer Michael Stucker.

At its heart is the Soviet American Sound: the marriage of vintage Soviet and Japanese microphones with classic American amplification. That sound has been cultivated through more than two decades of making records at Russian Recording, home to one of the world’s largest and most complete collections of working Soviet and Japanese microphones, paired with a one-of-a-kind Sphere Eclipse Type III analog recording console.

Thousands of records have been made with these tools, yet the originals are frightfully rare and increasingly difficult to source in any condition, let alone in the working order required by professional studios. SAAS was founded to close that gap, making their distinctive sound accessible to other engineers, artists, producers, and studios both by sourcing and restoring original examples and by developing new equipment inspired by them. These new designs preserve what makes the originals special while providing the reliability, ergonomics, and functionality a modern studio needs.

The partnership grew out of Stucker and Bridavsky’s work transforming Russian Recording’s 1972 Sphere Eclipse Type II console into the Type III. Drawing on their complementary expertise and lifelong passion for analog recording, they spent more than four years reimagining, redesigning, rebuilding, and refining the console to achieve greater sonic depth and substantially improved versatility and functionality. That project directly inspired SAAS and led Stucker to develop the proprietary DOA60 discrete operational amplifier, which now sits at the heart of the company’s amplification products.

Stucker leads the amplification line, bringing decades of studio technical experience along with design work for BAE and UK Sound. SAAS’s amplification products are original designs inspired by the Type III console, preserving its sonic character while refining performance and giving engineers greater control.

The first product, the MP500, is a dual-gain-stage, transformer-balanced 500 Series microphone preamp based on the preamps in the Type III console. Its input and output transformers are manufactured by Cinemag, which was founded as part of Reichenbach Engineering, the maker of the original transformers. Independent input gain and output level controls allow engineers to run it clean or push it into saturation while maintaining control of the output level.

Bridavsky leads the development of SAAS’s forthcoming microphones, drawing on decades of recording with, collecting, and studying the originals. These painstakingly faithful recreations of vintage Soviet designs add improvements focused on reliability, ergonomics, and functionality, while preserving the sound and distinctive industrial aesthetics of the originals. The goal is to make the sound of these rare and desirable microphones readily available to recording engineers worldwide, in tools they can depend on every day.

SAAS began by sourcing and restoring original equipment and providing consultation, racking, and repair services for vintage Soviet microphones and Sphere consoles. Those services remain an integral part of the company’s work alongside its growing line of new products. All SAAS units are assembled and tested by hand in Bloomington, Indiana.