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Empress Tremolo

Dec 14, 2003
2,048
8
42
Alberta
As a disclaimer before I say anything, I can't really compare this to anything other than some brief time on a boss tremolo a year or two back so take it with a grain of salt. Also, I'm absolutely in love with this pedal, so it might be tough to be objective.

Summary-- You get the level of quality one expects in this price range in terms of build quality, noise levels, and such. Lots of possibilities (too many to list, I'll always answer questions if I missed something though) with the only flaw that really could bother me being a bit of clipping on a hotter signal. Oh yeah, no low end loss that I can notice, and a great company to deal with.

A bad picture of an ugly pedal to get started :)
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As far as I can tell, the basic trem on this does what you would expect. It doesn't seem to alter the signal you put in (aside from the volume changes) lots of throbby lows if thats what you give it, and good and sparkly on the guitar. Range on the knobs covers all the territory I'd ever use from super slow to way faster than I need, and depth goes from no volume change to totally off.

The tap tempo is easy to use, even with the knob for different ratios, and two speed is pretty simple once you get the hang of it ( instructions were lacking in this area). It unfortunately only ramps up to the higher speed, and doesn't ramp down to the slower. Also, there's no way to control the ramp speed.

The asymetric mode (vs triangle or square which should be self explanatory) seems like its pretty close to a ramp style wave (thats a sudden drop and a swell back up?).

Finally, the rhythms. These are great fun. I think it emphasises every beat, then every second, third, 4th and 5th beats before hitting less regular modes. The less regular ones can get some cool synthy sounds (especially with fuzz/filter) and the others can be more subtle but add a nice extra layer if a straight up trem is getting boring.

And things that bother me. Theres the mentioned problems in the two speed mode (no down ramp, and no rate of change control. Also its a bit of a pain controlling 2 speeds with one knob) but one can see why they didn't put on a control for every parameter.
The boost is pretty limited, and isn't much (i think the site has a dB figure) of a push for other effects. It also seems to colip more easily than I would like. With the gain set just to match percieved volume levels with the effect on and off, it will clip with a hot signal. I don't mean hot bass signal, in that my active godin (piezo's) and my precision through a bit of boost (most of my effects are run to not boost the signal) are fine. I think running it after a serious booster would be an issue, and without a pad of some form, my moogerfooger pushes it into driving pretty much constantly.
Minor flaws are that the knobs stick up way to high (i'm worried about breaking one off) and the switches look to me like they're in an awkward place.

I'm totally unable to make soundclips but the manufacturers seem pretty accurate and show a pretty decent range of possibilities (although, on guitar).

I'm tired so I can't think of anything else right now...
 
The awkward switches are for choosing the waveshape and the way you control rate.

1st picks tap tempo, normal rate control, or two switchable speeds. Second is a triangle wave, "tube" or asymetric mode, and square wave. Depending on how you treat your pedals I figured they could be a liability there, but I don't like side mounted knobs or switches so I'm biased.

Otherwise, I'll add any thoughts I have, but right now I'd still just be raving about how much fun it is. :)
 
To be honest, I really can't make much of a comparison, as the time on the boss was brief and a while ago (I really only mentioned it to show that I wasn't any kind of tremolo authority). I didn't really see much in the way of problems with the boss when I'd tried it, but I really couldn't give any kind of objective comparison as it was just to long between the two. The empress is really quiet, more so than most of the boss effects I've tried, but there's a pretty big range of quality there so I can't quite remember where the trem fit in...

Sorry I can't say much more than that.