Expression pedals come in two pinouts. Some put the signal on the tip of the TRS cable (what the Reverb 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.

Sending CV clock information to the Reverb is set up the same way as using an external tap switch. The Reverb 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.

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 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!

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.

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 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. 

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 we'd like to explain how and why this can sometimes occur.

First off, in a perfect world we would be able to run two algorithms simultaneously and just cutoff the input signal to the preset you're leaving, so it would decay naturally and perfectly, and the new preset sound would load up. Unfortunately, we don't have the processing power to run two modes at once. If we did this we'd be sacrificing a lot of quality - which we don't want to do for obvious reasons.

So, how does the spillover work?

When you hit load on a new preset, the pedal takes the last chunk of wet audio coming out of the pedal and puts some fades on it and overlaps copies of that with itself and starts playing that out. It's overlapping 4 copies of that audio to try to get it relatively smooth, and then there's a slow fade-out applied to that signal. The length of that fade-out is calculated based on the decay settings. So if the preset you're leaving has a long decay, the fade-out will be long to mimic that setting. Similarly, the length of the chunk that gets overlapped depends on your decay setting. For longer decays, the wet signal is generally smoother sounding, and we use a longer chunk. With the longer chunks the overlaps it will sound less phasy when they overlap. As these things are happening we're also compensating for wet volume variations between the modes, and shutting down the last mode and initializing the new mode which is pretty computationally intensive.

So, what does all this mean for the player? In some situations this approach will work pretty well, in others, it will fall short. I think this explains why some people are finding it is working from them and others are noticing artifacts like stuttering.

Best case scenario:

You have a longer decay, you're playing a pretty legato part and you load the new preset right as you start playing the next section. The chunk of audio that gets overlapped would then be pretty smooth sounding, and since you're playing the new part right away any phasyness from overlaps gets masked a little by the new sound playing over top of it.

Worst case scenario:

You are playing staccato parts, with a shorter decay setting and you're going from a preset where the mix is really loud to a preset where it's really quiet, and you load the preset a little bit before you start playing the next section of the song. In this case, the chunk that gets grabbed might have some playing in it, but maybe even be silent in parts, so when it gets overlapped you distinctly hear the repeats (stuttering). We're intentionally grabbing shorter chunks of audio with shorter decay times to avoid this but it definitely can still happen. The shorter chunks, even if they contain somewhat smooth audio, will tend to sound pretty phasy when overlapped. One thing you can do to improve this situation is to switch presets right before you start to play your next part, so if you're tap dancing to get a bunch of pedals on and off, leave the reverb until last, if possible.

Here are all the old firmware updates for the Reverb. For the newest firmware and instructions for the installation please go here.

• eerv0100.bin
• eerv0202.bin
• eerv0203.bin
• eerv0204.bin
• eerv0205.bin
• eerv0206.bin
• eerv0300.bin
• eerv0301.bin
• eerv0302.bin
• eerv0303.bin
• eerv0304.bin
• eerv0400.bin
• eerv0401.bin
• eerv0500.bin
• eerv0501.bin
• eerv0502.bin
• eerv0503.bin
• eerv0504.bin
• eerv0505.bin
• reverb-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 Reverb. Attached are the firmware files and the changelog.

How to upgrade your Reverb's firmware

1) Download the firmware file from below. It should have the format eervXXXX.bin where the XXXX is replaced by the version number.

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.

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:

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”.

• eerv0600.bin
• eerv0601.bin
• eerv0602.bin
• eerv0607.bin
• eerv0608.bin
• eerv0609.bin
• reverb changelog.txt

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.

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!

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!

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 Reverb :)