Empress Effects
Our interview with Steve Bragg of
Empress was made possible because
Bragg had just blown up a converter for
a new analog delay. Such is the life of a
stompbox builder pushing the envelope.
Empress Effects—which manufactures the
Superdelay (which won a Premier Gear
award in our November 2009 review), the
Vintage Modified Superdelay, and the Tap
Tremolo in Ottawa, Canada—is another company
that’s carving out new territory in the
high-end stompbox realm by wholeheartedly
embracing digital technology while maintaining
an appreciation for what made early analog
circuits sound so good.
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.
Unlike some builders, Bragg didn’t fall in
love with any particular pedal in his formative
years. He was more interested in
pedals as a means for learning the way
electronic circuits work, and he gravitated
toward making effects for keyboard players.
He did, however, love the way certain
songs and records sounded. And his first
pedal—a sort of syncopated tremolo that
ultimately found its way into the Empress
Tremolo—was inspired by the song “Vow”
by Garbage.
“I love the idea of combining electronic
and acoustic components, using drum triggers,
having one instrument affect another,
or having effects sync to tempo,” Bragg
says. “There’s a bunch of bands I listened
to growing up—like Archive, Radiohead,
Björk, My Bloody Valentine, and Garbage—
that do that kind of stuff really well. Jonny
Greenwood from Radiohead continues to
be a big inspiration.”
That contemporary frame of reference
may have released Bragg from the baggage
that keeps many analog devotees
unwaveringly in the anti-digital camp. He
readily embraced the possibilities afforded by
having analog circuits and digital processing
working in concert to enhance a guitarist’s
potential. “I really like the idea of having an
analog circuit controlled by a microprocessor.
This makes a bunch of interesting stuff
possible: tap tempo, presets, programmable
triggering, arbitrary waveforms, and completely
new effects that would be impossible
or really difficult with a purely analog design.”
Apparently, many forward-thinking guitarists
agreed with Bragg. “After releasing the
Superdelay, I got a lot of requests to add
mods so it could work with other gear,” he
explains. “Some people wanted to use CV
[control voltage] to control it. Some people
wanted to use relays to control the tempo
instead of the tap stomp switch. Some
wanted MIDI controllability. Unfortunately,
there’s not enough room on a pedal for a
lot of jacks. So we’ve been working for the
past two years on a control port that will
accept a bunch of different inputs: mechanical
switches for remote tapping, expression
and CV inputs, MIDI, and audio input. It’s
been a pain in the ass, but it’s finally all
working. Our first pedal with this control
port will be the Empress Phaser, which we’ll
be releasing sometime soon.”
Bragg and Empress’ open-minded stance
extends to the components that go into their
pedals, as well. They refuse to be constrained
by the emphasis on older components and
instead go with parts that last and sound
best. “We designed our pedals to be as clean
as possible,” Bragg says. “That means using
op-amps, for the most part, and staying away
from transistors that can create headroom,
noise, and impedance issues in the audio path.
I see a lot of funny hype in effects marketing
material, where Teflon wires, expensive capacitors,
gold-plated PCBs [printed circuit boards],
and carbon-composite resistors or 1 percent
resistors are touted as audiophile. I have
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 emulating
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