SURVEY SAYS

We recently posted two online surveys to learn more about your pedal preferences and experience with Empress products. The response was overwhelming, and we received over 2,600 submissions. On behalf of everybody at Empress Effects, we want to say thank you to everybody who generously took the time to participate. We have a lot of passionate pedal fans on staff, but there’s no substitute for hearing from thousands of players about the gear and features they love, want, and need.

As our small way of saying thank you, every submission was entered into a draw from which three entrants were randomly selected to win any Empress Effects products of their choice. The winners were Lenny Stearns who picked an Echosystem, J Greenly who chose a Heavy Menace, and P. Meyer Higgins, who added a Euroburo to his setup.

With so many responses, and nearly 100 questions between both surveys, it will take a while to dig into and analyze all of the information, but here are a few of the things that we’ve learned so far from our customer survey.

Our big-box pedals seem to be the most popular among respondents. 28% own a ZOIA, 18.8% own an Echosystem, and 17.6% own a Reverb. Of players who are currently considering purchasing another Empress pedal, the most popular choices are the ParaEq MKII Deluxe (33.9%), Reverb (27.9%), Echosystem (24.4%), and Compressor MKII (23.3%).

Less than half of participants were aware that we will double your warranty to 4 years for free when you register your pedal at our website, so we probably need to make a bigger deal of that. If you haven’t registered your pedal yet and are in this window, jump on it!

60.3% of those who replied subscribe to our newsletter, 44.3% follow us on Instagram, 28.7% subscribe to our Youtube channel, and 17.6% follow us on Facebook. We’re not going anywhere on the other platforms, but Instagram will likely be our primary focus for social content.

From the questions about your pedal preferences, we learned that 64% of you have mounted your pedals on pedalboards. (This may suggest that 36% of people need more pedals.)

Over two thirds of respondents strongly or slightly prefer top-mounted connections. Only around 10% strongly or slightly prefer side-mounted audio connections, and less than 10% prefer side mounts for any other connections.

Almost two thirds of responses indicate a preference for creating and editing patches using dedicated controls, which is a big part of the appeal of the Echosystem and Reverb, as opposed to using a screen with navigation controls (16.4%) or a desktop/mobile editor (20%). However, USB was the most popular preference for patch transfer at 61.2%.

On the topic of computers, it looks like there are a lot of Apple fans among our customers, with 52.1% using MacOS for their primary desktop operating system, and 62.7% using iOS or iPadOS for mobile. Windows and Android had 43.5% and 34.8% shares, respectively.

A few final things stood out as we took a first look at the results. 89.9% of respondents said they thought the sound of their pedal was “great”, and an additional 8.3% said “good”. 93.4% said they would recommend their Empress pedal to somebody else. But perhaps most meaningfully to us, 81.9% of people who participated in our customer survey said they had a “very positive” opinion of Empress Effects, with an additional 11.6% selecting “Empress is my favourite pedal company”.

We recognize that selection bias is a factor. Players who already own an Empress product and are willing to take the time to participate in a detailed survey are probably more likely to have had a positive experience with the brand. Of course, not every response was positive, and we’ll pay careful attention to those as well. However, these results are nonetheless encouraging, heartwarming, and humbling. 

We’re grateful to everybody who participated, and to everybody who lets us be part of their musical process. We’re busy working on new projects that we hope will inspire and delight you, and the information that we gathered during these surveys will be a big help in ensuring we’re heading in the right direction.

Once again, from all of us at Empress Effects, thank you!