Today, I’m pretty excited to talk about the Empress Multidrive. The Empress Multidrive is the new pedal in their product line up. It’s a unit that has fuzz, overdrive and distortion in one box. What makes it different? You can blend them and you can shape the tone of the individual drives and adjust with the 3 band EQ (low,hi, mid) on the output. Each drive channel as low pass and high pass filters. You can also adjust the midrange frequency to be 500, 250 or 2K. Each drive channel has gain and volume controls. To turn off a particular drive channel, you just lower (or blend) the volume of that particular drive channel. You want OD, with a hint of fuzz? You want distortion fury mixed with fuzz? You can do it one box.
Here is the official description of the Empress Multidrive:
The idea of blending amps together has been a studio trick used on countless recordings over the years. Being able to blend the stregths of certain amplifiers and have other amps fill in the weaknesses produces a richer, better balanced sound. Up until now, the only way to repoduce this live was to haul a few amps around with you on the road. After a few gigs of doing that, a lot of players end up compromising tone for the ease of carrying 1 amp around with them. This is where the multidrive shines.
The multidrive allows you to blend Overdrive, Distortion and Fuzz together, creating a full and rich array of tones that would not be available otherwise. Let the sustain of fuzz, the bite of distortion and the clarity and note definition of overdrive all work together! Do what would normally take 3 amps in a 4×3″ box.
I found two good videos. The first video I was particularly impressed with it. It’s a studio clip where they use the Empress Multidrive to simulate a variety of nice amp tones. They A/B the actual amp and then the Empress Mulidrive. They get it pretty darn close. This video was submitted by empresseffects:
This next video is by xtimehascomex. This is a good video where he’s playing a basic riff and showing the different settings and how they impact the tone.
I would say this has to be one of the most versatile drive pedals you could probably buy out there. Coming from Empress (who also makes one of the best delay pedals on the market – Empress SuperDelay), you know this is going to be quality.
You can pick up the Empress Multidrive for only $299.00 at Amazon.com
If you own this pedal.. love to hear what you think by commenting below!
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