Empress Drive

Analog Drive

The Drive started as a question we couldn’t shake: what happens when you take the control and flexibility we’re known for and pair it with a loose, amp-like overdrive? The fastest way to find out was to patch a discontinued Germ Drive circuit into the middle of a Heavy Menace. It wasn’t elegant, but it sounded great — and more importantly, we all wanted to keep playing it.

From there, the project quickly grew more deliberate. Clipping options were compared, and EQ placement became a major focus. We even built a loop into a prototype so we could patch in a ParaEq and move it pre- or post-clipping, assessing how EQ affected not only tone but versatility and feel. Features stayed only if they made the pedal more usable, more predictable, or more expressive.

The result isn’t a single “correct” overdrive sound, but a tool for shaping how overdrive behaves. The Drive has been tested on guitars, basses, and synths, at low and high gain, by players with very different ideas of what good tone means. Our goal was to give you the versatility to take full control of your overdrive. The rest is up to you.

BOOST

The Drive includes up to 30dB of stomp switchable Pre- or Post-Overdrive Boost, giving you control over whether you push the Drive’s overdrive circuit or push whatever comes after it in your signal chain. By default, the boost is assigned Pre-Overdrive. The boost position can be changed via Advanced Configuration.

PRE-OVERDRIVE BOOST (DEFAULT)

When set to Pre-Overdrive, the boost increases the signal level going into the overdrive stage. This behaves much like hitting an amp with a clean boost, increasing saturation and changing the feel of the overdrive. In this mode, a high-pass filter is applied to the boost to reduce low-frequency rumble at higher gain settings. This keeps the low end tight and focused, even when pushing the Drive hard. 

POST-OVERDRIVE BOOST

When set to Post-Overdrive, the boost is applied after the overdrive stage and raises the overall output level of the pedal. This is ideal for pushing the front of an amp or the next pedal in your signal chain without changing the Drive’s gain character. You can use the Mix control to blend clean and driven signals to taste, then engage the Post-Overdrive Boost to increase volume for lead lines.

VU METER

Provides a visual indication of how hard you’re hitting the overdrive circuit, making it easy to see when you’re pushing the Drive into clipping.

MIDRANGE & MID FREQ CONTROLS

The Midrange controls let you shape the character of the overdrive itself, rather than EQ it after the fact. On the Drive, the Midrange tone control is placed before the clipping circuit. Adjusting the mids changes which frequencies are driving the gain response, directly affecting the harmonics that are created when the signal clips. Instead of simply boosting or cutting mids after distortion, you are re-voicing how the overdrive behaves and responds under your fingers.

The Mid Frequency control selects which frequencies are affected, while the Midrange control sets how much of those frequencies are boosted or cut. At its minimum, the Mid Frequency is centred around 200Hz for thicker, lower-mid emphasis. At noon, it sits around 1.2kHz for presence and articulation. At its maximum, it reaches up to 2.5kHz, adding bite
and upper-mid clarity.

The Midrange tone control uses a bell-shaped EQ whose bandwidth varies with the amount of boost or cut applied. Driving this control into the overdrive circuit increases or decreases the dominant harmonics generated, which can make the midrange feel wider or narrower than a traditional post-overdrive EQ. As a result, the response may not always feel perfectly one-to-one.

The Bass and Treble controls are designed to help manage the low and high frequencies that most often cause overdrive tones to sound boomy, shrill, thin, or muffled. Both use shelving filters with ±15dB of gain, allowing anything from subtle shaping to more dramatic tonal changes. The Bass control is centred around 200Hz, while the
Treble is centred around 2kHz. The Bass and Treble EQ is applied after the Mix
control, ensuring that adjustments affect both the clean and overdriven signals together and preventing unexpected changes in low or high frequencies when blending clean signal back in.

GATE

The Drive’s adaptive noise gate keeps your signal quiet when you’re not playing, without getting in the way of your dynamics or note decay. The gate is triggered directly from the signal at the input jack, before any filtering or clipping takes place. Its adaptive design responds to how you play, allowing sustained notes to decay naturally while
clamping down quickly when it detects a sudden stop. This keeps the gate feeling musical rather than abrupt, even at higher gain settings. When the gate is closed, the red LED beneath the Gate knob will be lit. When the gate is open, the LED
will be unlit.

Turning the Gate control fully counterclockwise sets the threshold to its lowest value and disables the gate. Turning the control clockwise raises the threshold, requiring a stronger input signal to open the gate.