Empress Effects Reverb

I didn't buy the pedal for modern reverbs like shimmer, swell etc. But I'm looking already for many years for the best pedal for big/long/warm/clean Hall and Plate reverbs on the market. I owned before: Specular Tempus, Strymon Big & Blue Sky, Ventris Audio Reverb, and severall cheaper reverb pedals. In A/B comparisons with the Empress I can say without any hesitation that the Empress Reverb delivers the most natural sound without any noise. All the other pedals did "something" with the sound of my guitar which I didn't like. And all of them where very difficult to get a long clean reverb without noise. The sounds of the Empress Reverb are really great. I really like the way of working with presets and banks and they are easy to select and/or tweak during live performances.
One little remark on the features: an USB port for connection with the PC (that many other pedals do have) would enlarge the tweakability. Especially some more adjustable parameters for the delay function would make the pedal really complete for me.
I honestly believe....if you want to keep the natural sound of your guitar and you want studio quality hall and plate for your live perfomances, there is no better choice than this Empress reverb.

I replaced my Eventide Space with this as I wanted the presets to change instantly, without a second of waiting for the next preset to be loaded. This one does it. However, if you switch into a preset with a high wet level, there is sometimes a faux spillover. I assume the spillover from the previous preset gets fed into the new preset and creates something that sounds a little like a tape delay for a second. It doesn't happen all the time, and I don't think it will be a problem in any live scenario. There are no level spikes when switching presets, unless you programed them with different levels. Every function can be remotely controlled using MIDI. Everything!!!! The manual does a great job of telling you how to. You can even save / load presets using MIDI commands. It is a little picky with SD cards, but once you go to a shop and get the right one, it's smooth sailing.

I have been blown away by it and I keep finding out more reasons to love it almost daily. It is pricey and there is no display and it only has 35 presets, but with a DAW, and some clever MIDI CCing, this becomes a limtless preset pedal.

I use this pedal in my live setup and in my studio, especially with synthesizers.
And in both cases, it has produced astonishing sound.

Slightly larger than average, it is very sturdy.
It sounds as a studio level reverb, lush and warm, with stereo input and output.
Also the Reverb UI is pretty intuitive.
Empress keeps improving the quality of products, updating this often on their forum.
My only regret is that you need to buy another product, the "Empress MIDIBOX", to control it via MIDI.

And, to conclude, I highly recommend this pedal, it's really something special.

It's great. Very high quality reverbs.

Both classic and wierd ones. The reverb melts into your guitar tone. Both clean, crunch and high gain.
Sounds very natural and as a blues, rock and 80's heavy metal rocker that's the most important.

It's cool with the other reverbs too. Very inspiring.
In cunjuction with the Echosystem i have now only need for a Uni-vibe, tremolo and a vibrato pedal. All other modulations are covered for me personally...

Presets was over the top (to much effect) for my setup, but it's easy to make your own. I allways make my own, so no problem. The output knob can boost or retract, which is a plus. When i get the midi setup, i actually don't need a clean boost for my lead tone. There is more than enough boost available in this box.

Empress updates their pedals (Reverb & EchoSystem) regulary, based on bug fixes needed, voting on the forum etc.

The need for separate midi box, is a little negative, but as long as it works, i have no problem with it.

All in all a fantastic pedal that is staying on my board with the Echosystem.

Pros: Amazing sound and easy operation. Also Midi.
Cons: The need for a separate midi box.

This pedal is absolutely genius. I've used vst verbs most of my life before which are amazing on their own. But after diving in to the realm of outboard gear, instead of trying to make everything in the box. I chose this pedal for reverbs instead of same price-range competitors. And boy this pedal does not disappoint!

It's extremely usable for electronic music production as well. I can use it on drums, do reverb "automations" hands on on hard drum and bass sound design basslines. Make the brass sounds extremely huge without compromising mono compatibility. And the range of algorithms you get with it is just amazing. I can always find/tweak a verb that fits like a glove.

I was considering different options for multi reverb station for my wet/dry/wet setup and choose Empress Effects Reverb because besides studio quality reverbs it also has a true stereo looper (you have to buy/have a sd card for looper ), cab sim and output transformer. Now I can also go direct to my mixing desk/usb interface.
This might be a pricey pedal but for me it was worth it as I wanted to have a stereo looper at the end of my signal chain and now I got one without buying a separate pedal.
I gave it four stars for features because two reasons:
1) I think that pedals in this price category should come with a power adapter. It wasn't a big problem for me and the pedal doesn't need as much mA as other similar pedals, but this could be a downside to others.
2) Empress Effects has a similar pedal for delay effects called Echosystem and it has two separate delay engines you can use in series or in parallel. I wish that they gave the same option for this pedal too.
Before this I had EHX Oceans 12 and while Empress Reverb has higher quality algorithms Oceans is dual engine pedal. If you're looking for reverb station, don't need a looper and don't want to spend as much it could be an alternative. However, for my needs Empress Effects Reverb is just right and will stay on my board for years to come.