Empress Effects Heavy Hi-Gain Distortion Pedal

This a beast of a pedal. Very tube like tone, only better to my eare. Very effective eq controls and easy switching between channels. The less heavey channel on low gain produces this nice creamy overdrive I've been looking for, perfect for classics stuff. It sounds even better with a booster in front of it. I own more than twenty OD/Distorton pedals but I barely use any of them anymore. The heavier channel is quite heavy, very versatile, nicely made pedal. Empress makes good pedals. Just buy it if you can afford it, you won't regret it.

I play organ, and rarely use pedals as they are usually dirty signalpath generators with silly graphics that rarely impress me in real time.I divined this on my own, but got good backup encouragement from my guitslangin" brother - Roland Rock.. "buy it! those guys make great stuff, if you don't like it, send it to me!"Sorry,Bro... this is a keeper!

The pedal is amazing but.....the packaging was horrible, it's like it wasn't packaged to be delivered. It just came in it's original packaging and it rained, luckily it didn't get completely soaked. One of the knobs came off as soon as opened the box, luckily I had the right tools to fix it.

This is one of the best METAL pedals out there. And worth every penny. If you have Humbucker pickups ....the low end harmonics are sick. The adjustable scoop range is genus. Very Fine Quality Build and performs well on both solid state amps as well as tube amps, although the tube amps sound a bit warmer. 5 star all the way. If you can afford this ......Purchase it you wont be sorry......

First, the good - the pedal has great sound. just flat out, it's great.Next, the bad. 1) first pedal I got just flat out didn't work. The switches didn't engage, the sound was maybe the most bizarre I've ever heard out of a pedal - like changing the pitch on what I was playing weird. I thought it might be my cord? My amp? my guitar? A bit of troubleshooting later, and it was indeed the pedal. Just a lemon.Got the new pedal as a replacement and confirmed I wasn't crazy - it worked fine.Next, however, as I try to adjust the noise gate threshold...the screw in the side of the pedal that allows for adjustment is not secure - perhaps it's mounted on a spring, but when one goes to rotate the screw, it's very hard to actually turn it with a flat-head screwdriver without pushing the knob into the housing. well, I managed to push it all the way into the housing and then had to desperately try to extract the screw head out with a pair of needlenose tweezers. Why? because I can't open the box at all! 3/4 screws came out easily, and the 4th was so embedded in the housing that I am unable to extract it out with completely stripping the screw.So, while the sound is good, maybe Empress should consider some QC updates to their line - 1. the noise gate threshold screw is very difficult to work with. It's great that it's hard to turn, because you wouldn't want it to adjust accidentally, but it needs to NOT be on a screw mount, b/c attempting to adjust pushes the head into the housing completely.I guess I'll just live with the factory set threshold, since I can't get the housing open

I play electric violin and love this distortion pedal. The dual channels are really convenient (I keep one gate on aggressive and the other set to off). I have tried a lot of the disto pedals out there, and this was hands down the best for getting the heavy and aggressive, but still clean and intelligible, sound that I wanted for black metal.

This is an expensive pedal but worth it. Been using it for a couple of months now and am still extremely impressed at the tone and punch of each channel every time I use it.

I’ve gone through a lot of distortion pedals and I’ve never been able to dial in the right amount of gurthiness with clarity…. I could rant and rave about this for paragraphs, I was very impressed and excited jamming on this thing (the weight dial had an amazing effect on the low end, and the built in noise gates and mid range freq gives you so many possiblities)I LOVE this pedal