Review: Empress ParaEq

Started by Rhcole, March 27, 2018, 10:59:11 AM

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Rhcole

I'm one of those guys who is constantly fiddling with my tone to get it better. I have guitars with different pickups that I use according to my mood, different amps, pedals, boosters, Graphic EQs, etc. Up to this point, my go-to pedal for adjusting tone on the fly has been my trusty Sansamp Para Driver with its parametric Midrange EQ. But, it has the one sin of being a bit noisy that I particularly notice through headphones.

Enter the Empress ParaEq, a no-compromise three band parametric EQ with selectable Q levels for each of the Low, Middle, and High frequencies. A parametric EQ is essentially a tunable tone control that you can adjust across three frequency bands. The ParaEq is clean as a whistle, only about 5 inches long, and includes a very quiet booster with up to 30db of gain.

I think this pedal is the last word for live tone modifications for me. I owned a three band parametric EQ years ago as a rackmount, and this pedal is cleaner and equally versatile. With this pedal I can throw a bit more low end and midrange on my Tele Thinline to fatten it up, or thin out a humbucker to give it more single coil spank. I can adjust for amps, speakers, and rooms on the fly within seconds by finding the adjustments that sound right to me.

This is my second Empress pedal, and I really like the build quality and pristine engineering of their products. Sometimes boutique pedals really are better.
Five Stars. https://empresseffects.com/products/paraeq

Elantric

Quote from: Rhcole on March 27, 2018, 10:59:11 AM
I'm one of those guys who is constantly fiddling with my tone to get it better. I have guitars with different pickups that I use according to my mood, different amps, pedals, boosters, Graphic EQs, etc. Up to this point, my go-to pedal for adjusting tone on the fly has been my trusty Sansamp Para Driver with its parametric Midrange EQ. But, it has the one sin of being a bit noisy that I particularly notice through headphones.

Enter the Empress ParaEq, a no-comprise three band parametric EQ with selectable Q levels for each of the Low, Middle, and High frequencies. A parametric EQ is essentially a tunable tone control that you can adjust across three frequency bands. The ParaEq is clean as a whistle, only about 5 inches long, and includes a very quiet booster with up to 30db of gain.

I think this pedal is the last word for live tone modifications for me. I owned a three band parametric EQ years ago as a rackmount, and this pedal is cleaner and equally versatile. With this pedal I can throw a bit more low end and midrange on my Tele Thinline to fatten it up, or thin out a humbucker to give it more single coil spank. I can adjust for amps, speakers, and rooms on the fly within seconds by finding the adjustments that sound right to me.

This is my second Empress pedal, and I really like the build quality and pristine engineering of their products. Sometimes boutique pedals really are better.
Five Stars. https://empresseffects.com/products/paraeq

Agreed!

Ive had my eye on the Empress Buffer-Stereo A/B Loop box

I wish all effects had switchable phase, and Stereo Effects had MS Stereo controls and adjustable millisecond time alignement
https://empresseffects.com/products/buffer-stereo

- and many Effects pedals actually reverse the signal phase ( add milliseconds delay ) only when the effect is active  =   comb filtering phase cancellation issues when running effects in parallel