Profile: In 2005, having recently graduated from Queens University with a degree in electrical engineering, Steve was approached by a friend looking for a tremolo with a set of features that were unavailable on the market at the time. 7 Months later, Steve presented the tremolo to his friend. Turns out that his friend had already bought another tremolo and no longer needed it. Steve, now stuck with this new tremolo, went to sell it at a local used instruments store. The store liked it so much that they ordered 10. After speaking with a few other retailers, it was clear that there was a demand for these pedals. Thus Empress Effects was born.

On the tail of the Tremolos success, Steve got ambitious and began work on the Superdelay. The Superdelay took 2 years to design! During this period, Steve realized that, even if he worked 24 hours a day, he couldn't keep up with demand. And thus, the Empress family grew. Mike came on to take over assembly and Jay joined to help design pedals. Dan was brought in to handle all the business stuff so Steve could focus on designing pedals.

With this new team assembled, things ran much smoother and now, with 2 full time designers, new pedals came much quicker! In 2008, the ParaEq(the first pedal designed entirely by Jay) was released. Show less