Description
PRELOVED EMPRESS Tape Delay
Preloved condition.
The Empress Tape Delay is a compact digital delay designed to recreate the warmth, movement and instability of vintage tape echo while keeping the dry signal path completely analog. It is discontinued now, which makes clean used examples increasingly interesting for players who want Empress build quality and tape-style delay without stepping up to a larger multi-delay unit.
With three tape-age settings, onboard modulation, filtering, tap tempo, presets and a choice of true-bypass or buffered trails operation, it packs a serious amount of flexibility into a small enclosure.
Three Flavours of Tape Age
The Tape Delay lets you choose between three tape-age voicings, ranging from cleaner repeats through to darker, grittier and more worn-sounding echoes. That makes it easy to move from subtle vintage colour to deliberately degraded tape-style textures.
Tap Tempo, Ratios & Long Delay Times
Tap tempo and ratio selection make rhythmic delays easy to dial in, including dotted and triplet-based feels. The pedal offers delay times from very short slapback-style settings through to multi-second ambient repeats, with tap mode extending to around 3.3 seconds.
Filter & Modulation Control
The delayed signal can be shaped with high-pass or low-pass filtering, while the modulation section adds movement ranging from subtle tape wobble to more obvious pitch variation.
Presets, Trails & Advanced Configuration
The advanced configuration mode lets you store and recall presets, choose true bypass or buffered bypass with trails, and access extra behaviours such as Blips mode. It is a much deeper pedal than the simple top-panel layout suggests.
Key Features & Specifications
- Model: Empress Tape Delay
- Digital tape-style delay with analog dry path
- Three tape-age voicings
- Tap tempo with ratio selection
- Delay time: 5ms to 2.8s via controls
- Tap delay range: approximately 30ms to 3.3s
- High-pass and low-pass filtering
- Modulation control
- Preset support via advanced configuration
- True bypass or buffered bypass with trails
- Relay switching
- Blips mode
- Input impedance: 1MΩ
- Output impedance: 1kΩ
- Signal-to-noise ratio: approximately 103dB
- Power: 9V DC, centre negative
- Current draw: approximately 280mA
- Dimensions: approximately 4.5" x 3.5" x 1.5"
- Weight: approximately 1 lb / 454 g
Who Is It For?
This is ideal for players who want convincing tape-style delay character with modern convenience. It suits rock, ambient, indie, shoegaze, roots and anyone who likes rhythmic delay but still wants warmth and movement in the repeats.
Our Take
The Empress Tape Delay is one of those discontinued pedals that still makes a lot of sense. It sounds musical, the analog dry path keeps the core guitar tone intact, and the extra features like presets, trails and filtering make it much more versatile than a basic tape-echo emulator.
Available from Colemans Music South Melbourne with Fast Shipping Aus Wide.
