Empress Effects ParaEQ MKII Deluxe

23

Effect Pedal for Electric Guitar

  • Equalizer and boost
  • Parametric 3-band EQ
  • Controls: Frequency and gain controls for each band, boost control (+30 dB), 3 rotary controls for adjusting the frequency band
  • High-pass, low-pass, high-shelf and low-shelf filters
  • Footswitch: Bypass and Boost
  • True bypass
  • Status LED display for boost and bypass
  • Power supply via 9 - 18 V DC mains adapter (not included in delivery - suitable mains adapter: Art.409939)
  • Made in Canada

Note: Battery operation not supported.

Available since November 2022
Item number 554536
Sales Unit 1 piece(s)
B-Stock from $317 available
$344
The shipping costs are calculated on the checkout page.
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23 Customer ratings

4.9 / 5

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21 Reviews

X
Outstanding tone shaper
XIII 02.07.2023
I'll start with the conclusion so you don't have to read me rambling if you don't feel like it:
This is the best EQ equipment I've ever used! It is by far the most important tone-shaping piece of gear that I have. If you have problems with your tone like muddiness, harshness, too much or too little something, this is the tool you need to try to fix it. I greatly recommend it!

Some 25 years ago I bought a Boss GE-7, that was my first experience with an EQ pedal. I'll be blunt, I hated it. I found it noisy and hard to set up to get a usable tone, I sold it a few months later and basically gave up on EQ pedals.

Fast forward to today. For all these years, to me, EQ was just the 3/4 bands on the amp and the tone/s on the guitar/bass. I made do and was quite satisfied with the results for a long while until I started noticing that some of the tone issues I was inevitably having were starting to annoy me greatly.

I have a couple of Cort basses (B4 fretted and fretless) that I love. They feel absolutely great but the sound of them is not that good. The active preamp sounds very sterile and uninspiring to me and the passive sound, although quite nice, lacks power, big time. To complicate things a bit more, I love flatwounds but I also love a well-defined sound.
Well, this pedal fixed all my problems. I now just removed the battery out of my basses and play them passively using the very transparent clean boost and the tone shaping of the EQ to make my flatwounds sound more defined. It somehow keeps the basic tone of the instrument while solving the annoying inherent problems.

When it comes to guitars, I am definitely an active pickup enthusiast. All my present guitars have EMG's in them in 9v and 18v mods. I find that they work very nicely with the paraEQ MKII. One of my guitars, a Cort g300 has a basswood body that I found way too muddy. It came with a seymour duncan set that sounded quite good clean but got muddier and muddier the more overdrive/distortion was introduced into the loop. I then decided to replace the pickups with an 81/60 EMG set. This helped a bit but didn't fix the problem by any means. It took the paraEQ MKII to fix it and it did so brilliantly! The 3 bands of the paraEQ allowed me to remove the mud, and improve the definition and bite of my guitar. The level of articulation with heavy distortion is just impressive, every pick attack counts and sounds great.

Last but not least, I have to say that the user manual is brilliant! It is, honestly one of the best things about this pedal because it is very clear, easy to understand, and result oriented. It gives you some "basic" settings and explains very clearly what frequency to shape and how to do it in order to solve your tone problems. It even has a "my settings" section so you can write down your own settings. It only gives examples for electric/acoustic guitar and bass but the pedal can be used for probably any instrument you can imagine, it is clearly a "Swiss army knife".

I'll stop rambling now and give a simple conclusion: Although the price of this pedal is quite high, it is worth every single penny. This is an incredibly powerful and transparent tone shaper. The headroom is great, the shaping possibilities are endless and the overall quality is outstanding. If I really need to nitpick and found a con, my fat fingers have a hard time handling the tiny little black knobs, other than that, this is quite simply the most important pedal I own. To me it is way more than just another EQ, it is the ultimate tone problem solver.
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F
Matched all expectations
Figo 14.01.2023
Bought the ParaEQ Deluxe after reading and watching a lot of reviews of what’s out there on analog parametric EQ pedais. Everything seemed to suggest ParaEQ was the best and safe way to go and it checks. Great sound, build quality, and great pedal overall.
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C
Transparent EQ!
Colin5022 01.08.2023
I was looking for an EQ that didnt degrade my sound and found it with the Empress Para EQ Mk2 Deluxe. I'm a solo acoustic fingerstyle player so my sound is paramount.
There is a subtle "ease" to the sound quality, it's hard to describe, it may well be headroom. And there is none of that horrible "strangulating EQ" coloration.
It just does its job without much in the way of side-effects.
Perfect.
All my guitars use a K&K Mini pickup through an Audio Sprockets Tonedexter pre-amp with the Empress's in the Fx loop.
I use two different guitars playing live so I bought a second one.
Says it all really. :)
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P
Source Audio EQ2 vs Empress ParaEq mkII Deluxe
Petrum 17.09.2023
My two cents on the two parametric eq pedals:
If you are in the market for an effective good quality parametric eq pedal, that has more than a decent sonic quality, low noise, connectivity and fair price, and then on top of that you also want all the functionality that you can possibly dream in a para eq pedal, then go for the SA EQ2, you won't regret it, there is nothing that can't even remotely compare with this pedal out there.
However, if you are in the market for a true sonic/tone professional tool, with a super low noise, exceptional transparent sonic qualities, effective, intuitive and easy to use capabilities, that helps you to dial in that magic tone, no matter what is your gear, then go for the the Empress ParaEq mkII Deluxe. The caveat in buying this expensive tool though, is that you have to give up all the nice functions of a modern pedal, starting from presets, stereo connectivity and much, much more. You will live just with your magic tone (in mono) and the paper cards to recall your precious presets :).
As last note...if you can't decide between the standard ParaEq and the Deluxe, I suggest you to go for the Deluxe, especially if you live in the US for the better price. I know it costs a fortune, but I think the standard is really too limited, the HPF, LPF, the two shelf filters and the variable Q knobs are sweet sweet things to have, they really help your tone in a much better and effective way than the standard version.
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