EMPRESS EFFECTS HEAVY MENACE DISTORTION
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| $250.00 USD |
Empress started out in 2005 and was Strymon before there was a Strymon. Like Strymon it was started by an electrical engineer. The plan was simple. It was to make the very best and budget be damned. It has made many genius pedals but it is a small Canadian company that just didn't have the marketing or perhaps anyone in the company to take the reins of a thoroughbred company and put it past the finish line.
In 2010 they designed the 10 knob @ 3 switches 'Heavy Distortion' that is still made and sells well thru word of mouth. Rently they quietly did a total revamp of many products. Sold as version 2 they are more like version 10. In short all new with more features yet more user friendly. The Menace is totally new. With a decade of change both technical and for that matter our expectations it reflects it. The layout is Volume, gain, treble and bass with sweepable mids. A switch lets you choose a basic 70, 80's vibe or go to classic heavy sounds or push in modern beyond stupid dirt. You have a gate and a high pass filter to tighten the lows.
CONCLUSION
Impressive effect, pun intended:-)It has the attention to detail that you would get from an Origin Effects pedal. Oddly at half the price. It is unlikely not to sound basically the same no matter how good or how bleak your amp is. It is NOT an amp-in-a box where the foibles of your favourite real Marshall, MESA, Soldano etc. are included in the sound. It is meant to sound like a recording of the ultimate sound of a state of the art studio can give you. It is literally a kind of ...Perfect-in-a-Box.
You can wish it had, character, pixie dust, voodoo or mojo but otherwise at it's worse it is too flawless, LOL.
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