Empress Tape Delay

First I have to say. Empress...Impresses me. From their build quality, to top notch customer service, down to the way they take and implement customer feedback for new features. Just a solid company.

The Empress tape delay is in my opinion a "basic" solid delay. It'll do tape delay, but it is on the more subtle end of tape delay. Some will argue this is more realistic to what you will hear in real life. I think they are right.

But with our ventures into the digital age, staying true to the originals often limits from what you COULD do. I like a lot of range in my controls, so I tend to gravitate towards pedals that have lots of range. Ones that will go from subtle to all out whacky. This pedal does not get whacky.

The great! 

The ability to go full wet with the signal and cut out the dry signal is awesome.

Time warping your tape delay while fiddling with the knobs sounds really good in this pedal. It is fun.

The "Output" control is awesome, you wouldn't think a volume control on a pedal would be so useful, but it is.

HP/LP filter switch. I love this feature, whether you want your delays standing out or sitting back in the mix. You can have it here.

Both Modulation and Tape Age have very use-able and good sounding amounts of their respective effect.


The Decent 

Having toggle switches for Tape Age and Modulation. This would have been nice to have in knob form.

The pedal can go into self oscillation with the feedback turned up, but it gets very loud.

The Bad 

Unity gain on the mix knob is at about 2 ocklock. From about 3:30 on is full wet. This doesn't do louder than your original signal well with those mixes.

No stereo operation. If for nothing else, offer stereo to preserve stereo imaging. Delay comes late in the chain typically. I don't understand the descision to not have stereo here. This isn't exactly "off par" with other tape delay units however. So you can't knock them down to much.

This is going to be your standard fare workhorse delay. It is going to sound good. But aside from time warping, you are not going to get any "out of the ordinary" sounds out of this pedal. I only suggest getting it if the only thing you are looking to do is tape delay. If you are looking for more versatility I would suggest looking elsewhere.