Expression pedals come in two pinouts. Some put the signal on the tip of the TRS cable (what the Echosystem expects), some put the signal on the ring. If it's on the ring, all the action will happen in the first 10% of the pedal's travel.

YES! One of our great customers (Todd Pennington) meticulously made a layout for all the Empress pedals.

Here's where the layout lives.

All of our pedals that have MIDI use MIDI Type A (MIDI Standard). Same as Korg and Make Noise.

First thing to note is that MIDI clock will only work on Global Tap mode (blue) !

MIDI setup instructions

Entering Advanced Configuration
While holding down the tap and bypass stompswitches, press
the shift button. All the preset LEDs will blink yellow twice to
confirm you're in.

Set the control port to receive MIDI:
What you want is Tape #5 using the delay time knob

First of all, sorry! That's really annoying to deal with. Here are some things to consider:

We use MIDI type A (listen on the TIP, send on the RING)
- which is superior as it doesn't require a TRS cable unless you plan on sending PC messages out of the pedal.

Some other devices and brands have the opposite pinout so you'll need to check!

Most companies add jumpers or switches that allow you to change the pinout to be compatible with most devices.

If you're using a splitter like the Quadra-thru you may have issues as the Echosystem and Reverb do not have an optocoupler (the ZOIA does so it should be compatible with virtually anything out there)

If the device you're using isn't performing as desired and you've checked that your cables are good and the pinouts match, you may need to try swapping the splitter with an active one like the midibox2 - though you don't have to use ours, there are tons of them out there!

Sending CV clock information to the Echosystem is set up the same way as using an external tap switch. The Echosystem must be in Global(blue tap) mode to receive tap information from a switch or clock.

To set this up go into the advanced config menu by holding down the select and bypass stomps. The preset LEDs will blink twice to indicate you are in.

Turn the mode knob to Blue Plate and then use the decay knob to light up preset number 3 or 4 for normally open or closed switches. Exit advanced config by holding down the select and bypass stompswitches.

Control port configuration:
Plate -
1. Expression Pedal*
2. Control Voltage Input
3. Normally Open Switch
4. Normally Closed Switch
5. MIDI
6. MIDI with Preset Out

As of 2.09 there is a known bug that happens if you are sending CV signals while the pedal is booting up or exiting advanced configuration mode that makes the pedal freeze. As a workaround unplug the cable from the control port until the pedal boots up if you are sending clock info to the pedal until a fix is available.

By far the easiest way to set this up is with the quick start settings.

What you want to do is simply tap in with the tempo of the song. 

At the beginning, you would tap for each of my strums.

So it would be "1, 2, 3, 4" - count as you tap

Then pick your notes twice as fast and you have it!

The looper can be a bit tricky to get going at first but once you get it set up things run pretty smoothly.  Remember the looper must be v30 or higher.  It will say v30 on the SD card. 

1.  When you try and enter looper mode by holding down the right and middle stompswitches what happens? 

     a. the first preset LED lights up blue - if so you are in looper mode

     b. nothing happens - looper mode has not been enabled or your firmware has not been updated, see the FAQ for updating the Reverb or Echosystem.  Read below to enable looper mode. 

     c. the preset lights flash red - the SD card cannot be read.  Will talk more about that below.

Enable Looper

- enter Advanced Configuration: hold LEFT and RIGHT stompswitches, hit SHIFT/SAVE 

- rotate MODE till PLATE /TAPE is lit GREEN

- turn decay/delay time all the way up, preset LED should go to #2 

- the looper is now enabled 

If you don't see a Green Plate/Tape option, then your pedal is not up to date and you need to instal the latest firmware to use the looper.

If the Preset Lights Flash Red

The SD card is not recognized or compatible with the looper.  Did you insert the SD card after booting up the pedal? power cycle the pedal and see if it works, the SD card is not hot-swappable and will flash red if you insert it after powering on the pedal.

A lot of off brand cards seem to give the looper problems, so I recommend buying a card from a brand you recognize.  
The looper requires an SD card that is V30 or higher and SDHC.  SDXC cards should work as well, it will say SDHC on the face of the card.  

The card does not have to be FAT32 and will corrupt any data on the card. Try clearing the card and  reformatting the card to FAT32 or exFat if you get red flashing lights.  If you format to exFat the looper will still work but it won't work for updating the pedal. 

A couple other things could go wrong here.

1.  The card is locked: There will be a switch on the left side of the SD card to lock it.  

2.  The Switch is broken: If the lock switch on the side of the card breaks the looper can fail while still working occasionally. I actually recommend the card pictured, it is a pretty good card despite the broken switch.

3.  The SD card is broken or failed.  Even if it worked previously SD cards can break or fail in various ways and I would recommend testing with another SD card.  Connect it to your computer to see if you can reformat it and try again. 

If you are running Reverb 5.00 or Echosystem 2.00 or greater, you can now import and export your presets from an SD card.

The SD card must be SDHC or SDXC type and must be formatted with a FAT32 file system.

These instructions are for the Echosystem. For the Reverb, just replace "echosystem" with "reverb".

To export presets to the SD card, make a directory in the root directory of the SD card called "from_echosystem". On startup, Echosystem will populate this directory with presets and the advanced config settings.

To import presets from the SD card, make a directory in the root directory of the SD card called "to_echosystem". Presets that are named NN_echosystem.bin when NN is a number between 0 and 35 inclusive will be loaded into Echosystem memory.

The V30 looper is available on firmwares Echosystem 2.03 and Reverb 5.03 and above. We've made changes to the V30 looper since those versions. 

The instructions below are for Echosystem 2.03 and Reverb 5.03 and above.

It's called V30 cause it needs an SD card that says V30 on it. If it says V60 or V90 or some other number large than 30, that's okay too.

The V30 looper records up loops up to 10 minutes.

 The V30 looper will corrupt any data on the SD card, so don't use a card with important stuff on it!

Please keep volume down for awhile while using! We've tested with a bunch of V30 cards, but probably haven't tested with yours, so stay safe!

If you find bugs, email us at support@empresseffects.com

** there has been some confusion about whether you need the SD card in the pedal to run the looper. The answer is yes **.  You need the SD card in the pedal when it boots up to enter looper mode

I recommend: 

updating the Echosystem to at least firmware 2.04 and updating the Reverb to at least 5.04

remove the firmware on your SD card

re-insert SD card

boot the pedal again and start the looper

 Enable Looper

- enter Advanced Configuration: hold LEFT and RIGHT stompswitches, hit SHIFT/SAVE 

- rotate MODE till PLATE /TAPE is lit GREEN

- turn decay/delay time all the way up, preset LED should go to #2 

- the looper is now enabled 

Effects Routing (making looper pre or post effect)

- while still in Advanced Configuration, rotate MODE to SPRING/ANALOG and rotate decay/delay time is lit GREEN

- looper before effect (counterclockwise) 

- looper after effect (clockwise) 

** I recommend starting with "looper after reverb/echosystem"; that way you can apply different reverb settings to each track ** 

- exiting Advanced Configuration

- press LEFT and RIGHT stompswitches together, pedal will reboot

Updating to Beta Firmware 

- put V30 SD card into pedal and reboot 

- if all of the LEDs blink for a few seconds, the SD card doesn't have a FAT32 file system on it 

- do a full format of the SD card to FAT32 and start over, Do not pass GO 

- when updating is successful, remove firmware form SD card, reinsert in pedal and reboot

Multitrack Looper Instructions 

Since the V30 looper corrupts the SD card, you'll probably get the pedal blinking red when you boot it up. This is okay. This is the bootloader saying the file system on the card is corrupt. The V30 looper doesn't need the file system.

Entering/Exiting Looper UI Mode - hold down MIDDLE and RIGHT stomps for about a second

Move Active Track Right - tap MIDDLE and RIGHT stomps together

Move Active Track Left - tap LEFT and MIDDLE stomps together

Start/Stop Recording - tap LEFT stomp 

Play/Stop - tap RIGHT stomp

Mute/Unmute the active track - tap MIDDLE stomp

Clear an active track with material in it - hold LEFT and MIDDLE buttons together for one second

Clear all tracks - move to an empty track and hold LEFT and MIDDLE buttons together for one second

Adjust looper playback volume - adjust output knob while in looper UI mode.

LED Colors

Green: track is currently playing

Blue: track is active but doesn't contain any audio

Red: track is currently recording

Aqua: track contains audio, but looper is stopped

Yellow: track is muted

Purple: track is recording but is muted

The bright track is the active track.

Notes 

- while in looper UI mode, the knobs still affect the reverb/echosystem sound, so you can change up the modes or the parameters while in looper UI mode. 

- the tracks still play when you exit looper UI mode.

- V30 looper will stay play with pedal bypassed, unless you have the pedal set to true bypass.

This click is a preventative maintenance feature to work out the relays when switching bypass states in the advanced config menu. Don't worry, there isn't a tiny mouse living in your pedal and eating all the wires!

Minimum time:

All modes have a minimum delay time of 5 milliseconds.

Maximum time:

Almost all the modes have a tap and knob time.

The maximum tap time for non-multitap modes is 2.5 seconds. Keep in mind that the ratio applies after this - so if you used the the max ratio of 1.67:1 (tied quarter note triplet) it would be 4.175 seconds

The maximum delay time you can set with the knob is 1.2 seconds. We picked this range because the avg person wants 100-400ms delays, and they're hard to dial in if the knob range is huge.

For multitap modes, the maximum tap time (for any of the multi-taps) is 2.0 seconds.

The maximum time of the special long delay mode (ambient yellow) is 8.0 seconds. It multiplies your tap time by 4 to get the delay time.

If you want the color from a tape mode, but need a really long delay, you can always set the routing to serial and send the tape mode (with a really fast delay time) into the long delay mode to achieve a really long tape delay mode.

Knob postion / MIDI CC value / tap time

There's 2 ways to see which engine is first:
1. When you go to a serial preset the first engine will always be what shows bright when it's recalled. If you're editing that preset and get confused you can always save and recall it.
2. Or, if you switch engine order(press shift+engines) it will always show the first in line as bright after a switch. So you could switch twice if you forget which one is first.

1. Hardware, Inputs/Outputs

The echosystem expands on everything in the SD (superdelay/vintage modified superdelay) so you won't lose anything. (Of course you gain stereo, control port, ability to use expression pedal on (m)any parameter, upgrade ability w/SD Card, transformer isolated output, ability to run wet/dry setups, cab sims, and more).

2. Controls

Again, the Echosystem has more control over the modes compared to the SD.  We don't have a dedicated modulation control on the ES, but most of the modes where modulation is an important part of the sound we put it on the thing 1 and 2 controls. In many cases, we have thing 1 as modulation speed, and thing 2 and depth for ultimate control. The ES tone control gives you better control than the SD toggle.

3. Modes

Here things get a little more complicated. I'll go through them 1-by-1 below, in some cases we left off modes that people didn't seem to use on the SD, but of course you could vote for them to be re-included in our voting forum and the ones we left off could be re-added.

Digital: The ES covers all the SD these modes with greater control over modulation. You also get longer delay up to 8.0s for ambient stuff.

Tap: Every mode on the ES uses tap with a few exceptions where it doesn't really make sense (like stutter). So this mode is kind of redundant on the ES.

Auto: This is a mode that we don't currently have on the ES. We didn't find it was popular on the SD....that being said, it would be fairly simple to add. Also, our implementation would be better because the ES has much more processing power, which means we can detect triggers much better.

Reverse: ES does everything the SD did. The popular REV C sound can easily be achieved using the Reverse Pitch algo, with the thing knobs set to an +1 octave.

Rhythm: ES does the SD sounds and more because we have volume and tone variations on the different multi-taps which make it sound way cooler. With the SD we had a preset dynamic variation with one setting only.

Tape: We had the ability to make the tape saturation more accurate in the ES with the additional processing power. We also currently have 4 tape modes that cover a wider range of tape sounds and 3 of them are in the same realm as the SD. That being said, there's some people who may find there's some esoteric part of the VMSD sound that we've left out. It would be possible to make it exactly the same if people voted for it in the voting forum. The Echoplex sound is different in character than the VMSD - it tends to have brighter decays compared to the darker decays in the VMSD. The controls have changed though, so to match a VMSD tape sound you'll have to dial it in a little bit differently.

Misc: The dynamic modes we have under the digital category in the ES. You can dial them in more precisely, and they should be more useful with a wider range of guitars and playing styles and parts in the ES. We haven't done the gated mode because having trails with the ES sort of makes this mode redundant.

Looper: As of May 8th, 2017 there's no looper in the ES yet. It's on its way to being implemented though. Our plan is to have it much more capable than the SD looper. Steve's working on this presently.

4. Other New Stuff on the ES

Dual-engines, Lower noise, midi, dual-engine, trails between single engine presets, 2-preset systems, way more modes (and counting).

Disclaimer...The superdelay modes were coded 8 to 10 years ago so it's probable that I'm forgetting some intricacy of one or two modes. That being said, the ES has so much more processing power so if there's something important that's missing you can put it in the voting forum and we can most likely add it.

Cheers,

Jay(Audio DSP person on the ES and many of the VMSD/SD modes)

WHEN TRYING TO UPDATE THE PEDAL
If you are getting flashing red lights when the pedal boots up this means the SD card is not recognized.

5) Are you having problems with your computer reading the SD card?  If you're using a Mac with Big Sur installed there are a number of reports online about SD card read issues with Big Sur, a google search may be the best way to determine the latest fix for Mac card read errors. 

Here are a couple cards we tested that we know work:

UPDATE:  The Lexar card pictured will work to update the pedal but will not work for the looper

Also, we do have a SanDisk 16GB card (pictured below) that doesn't work, and we don't know why. And there's a couple other SanDisk cards that customers have reported not working. We haven't gotten to the bottom of that mystery yet. So if you're having issues after following the 3 steps above, and your card is a SanDisk, please try a different card if you can. Hopefully at some point we solve the mystery.

Email support@empresseffects.com if you have any issues.

Here's the old firmware versions. If you want the new firmware versions, go here.

• eees0100.bin
• eees0101.bin
• eees0105.bin
• eees0107.bin
• eees0108.bin
• eees0204.bin
• eees0206.bin
• eees0207.bin
• eees0208.bin
• eees0209.bin
• eees0213.bin
• eees0214.bin
• echosystem-changelog.txt

The SD Card requirements are a little bit confusing.

SD Requirements to Update the pedal firmware you need:

1 - SD Card has to be SDHC  type (the HC stands for high capacity, and almost every SD card made in the last 10 years is the HC type).

2 - The SD Card has to be formatted to FAT32. (With some newer SD Cards that are higher capacity (usually 64GB or bigger) windows wants to format them FATex which is sort of a pain, but there's utilities you can use to format them to FAT32).

If the conditions of above aren't met, you'll see the mode leds flash red when the pedal starts up. If you're not trying to update the pedal, but are using the looper that's ok.

Note: 

- For firmware updates we don't care about the V30 (V30 means it's video speed class and means that it can maintain certain data throughput rates without pauses).

- Doing the firmware update shouldn't corrupt other data on the card ( but we always recommend backing up anything else on there anyways).

SD Requirements to use the looper:

- SD Card has to be HC (like above), and has to be V30. ( The V30 is important because we have to maintain some higher data throughput of audio without dropping out. When we didn't enforce this people were experiencing dropouts because some cards couldn't keep up).

If the V30  requirement is not met, you'll see the preset leds flash red when you're holding down the middle and right stomps trying to enter the looper mode.

Note:

- The formatting (FAT32, FATex ) is un-important for running the looper. The looper writes the audio to the card as raw data, so in many cases it will corrupt the filesystem (and files) on the card.

Below are instructions on how to update the firmware on your Echosystem. Attached are the firmware files and the changelog.

 

How to upgrade your Echosystem's firmware

1) Download the firmware file from below. It should have the format eeesXXXX.bin where the XXXX is replaced by the version number. The most recent copy of the Echosystem firmware is eees0214.bin

2) copy the file to the root directory of a high-capacity SD card that's been formatted FAT32 (see Note 1 if you're having issues).

 

3) insert the SD card then power on the pedal. (which may look like a reverb but is actually an Echosystem in disguise) 
 

4) the preset LEDs should flash yellow for a bit, then all turn green when the update is complete. This should take about 15 seconds. Wait till your pedal boots normally and is playable.
 

5) remove SD card, turn your pedal off and then on again and you're good! (this part is a little redundant, but it's good to cycle your power just to make sure everything is nice and working!)
 

Note 1: Quick format won't work, you need to do a full format. We recommend using a PC, since Apple products put proprietary files onto SD cards and sometimes make the reformats unreliable for use in our products. Here are picture instructions for that: 

 

Note 2:  Empress firmware updates are released in the binary (.bin) file format.  Some browsers, including Chrome and Firefox, are identifying .bin files as potentially harmful and may prevent users from downloading them. We are working on a solution, but in the interim, please follow the steps below to download these updates.

On Chrome:

1. Download the file below as usual.
2. Click “Show All” on the right of the download bar.
   1. Alternatively, go to your Chrome Downloads page (control+J on Windows, option+command+L on Mac).
3. Select “Keep dangerous file”.
4. Select “Keep Anyway”.

1. Download the file below as usual.
2. In the Download overlay that appears, click the “>” button to the right of the exclamation point.
3. Select “Allow download”.

• eees0215.bin
• echosystem-changelog.txt

Here's a nice little video on how to figure this out. Note that video features the Empress Reverb, but that the process for figuring out the firmware version on the Echosystem is exactly the same.

But if you don't want to go to Instagram or watch a video, I'll just tell you!

When you turn on your Echosystem, you will see some of the modes lights and presets lights turn on.

The preset light represents the whole number of the firmware version.

For example:

Preset 1 BLUE is 1.00
Preset 5 BLUE is 5.00
Preset 1 GREEN is 6.00

The modes light represents the decimal number of the firmware version.

For example:

Hall BLUE is 0.01
Sparkle BLUE is 0.05
Hall Green is 0.13

Echosystem

Digital BLUE is 0.01
Mod BLUE is 0.05
Digital GREEN is 0.13

So if your Echosystem turns on with Preset 2 BLUE and Digital GREEN, the firmware would be 2.13!

Updating the firmware will not affect your presets; however, we recommend keeping a log of all of your settings just in case something happens.

Issues experienced by our customers are often resolved by performing a factory reset which can clear out bugs... and deletes your presets.

We are not all made equal and normally size doesn't matter, but in this case... it does.

Some patch cables are slightly smaller spec than what the audio jacks expect.  

We've noticed this problem with plugs that aren't exactly 1/4" thick. If you're curious and have a micrometer, you could check the widths of the tip, ring, and sleeve of your plugs.

It's a very tiny discrepancy but it will cause some movement within the jack which results in unpleasant noises.

You can do a very easy mod that will eliminate this issue

Just add a jumper from the ring to the sleeve.

- we didn't think we would need this but it has now been updated on all new Echosystems.

This will not void your warranty.

*If you don't have a soldering iron / don't know anyone with one, contact us at support@empresseffects.com and we'll be happy to do this for you free of charge

There ya go!  Happy little Echosystem :)

By adding gain between the engines it's really easy to distort the signal internally and it leads to really nasty sounds and guitarists that are confused as to why their pedal sounds really bad. To avoid this we've essentially disabled the output control while you're in the first engine of a serial patch (which we realise is also a bit confusing, but we felt it was the lesser of two evils). You can still control the output volume by adjusting the volume control in the second engine (and there's little risk of it clipping because it's controlling an analog VCA).

We know that this limits doing expression pedal volume swells with the input signal. To help with this check out input rider mode - it's under ambient aqua in newer firmware. It's setup with thing 1 as an input level to the effect. If you assign your expression to that control you can do the fade-ins. It also has an All-pass filter on the output to further smooth out the swells.