5 Boutique Stompbox Builders You Should Know
serious doubts as to whether these kinds of
things affect the sound in an appreciable way.”
The same emphasis on clarity and quality
makes Empress less concerned with emulat-
ing revered stompboxes, even though they
regard many classic pedals as benchmarks.
“We’ve never been too concerned with
recreating what another pedal can do. But
if we make a pedal with a lot of features,
we want to make sure its basic sound is
as good as the standard go-to pedal. For
instance, when designing the phaser, we set
out to make a pedal that could do stuff no
other phaser could. But if it didn’t sound as
good as an MXR Phase 90, then we’d have
a problem.” Even so, Bragg says, “I think it’s
dangerous to design with someone else in
mind. Instead, I just pretend that I’m a really
creative musician—I know, it’s a stretch!—
and I ask myself what kind of stuff I would
need to make interesting sounds. So far, I
think we’ve only scratched the surface.”
empresseffects.com
102 PREMIER GUITAR NOVEMBER 2010 www.premierguitar.com
Like scientists amalgamating the best of old and new technologies, the Empress gang—(left to right) Mike Stack, Jason Fee, Steve Bragg, and Dan Junkins—embrace digital processing to extend an effect’s potential in
ways analog circuitry alone cannot.
