The Empress Effects Heavy Menace is the most versatile distortion pedal they’ve ever created, with a full 3 band EQ, independent noise gate and 3 distortion modes. It’s an evolution of their original Heavy with new features and a compact enclosure.

The channel switch selects between the three voices: Lite(ish), Heavy and Heavier for progressively more gain and high end covering any everything from classic hard rock to searing modern metal and there's loads of tone sculpting options available. The Weight control adjusts a high pass filter in the distortion circuit to shape low end character, turn it clockwise for a thick, full sound or counterclockwise for a tight response that's perfect for palm muting and extended range guitars. The full three band EQ boosts or cuts each frequency band by up to +/- 15 dB, the low shelf filter starts around 80 Hz, the high shelf filter starts around 3 kHz and the mid freq knob selects the centre frequency of the mid control knob sweepable from 200 Hz to 2.5 kHz (Scoop for a tight, aggressive sound or push to add definition and cut through a mix).

In addition to the distortion circuit there is a foot switchable noise gate, the gate lets sustained notes decay naturally but clamps down quickly during fast stops, the gate thresh knob adjusts the threshold level for the noise gate (how sensitive it is to triggering). Out of the box the noise gate can only be used while the distortion is active but this can be changed to make it completely independent from the noise gate as if you have a whole noise gate pedal in addition to the distortion pedal (this is easy to change using the advanced configuration mode which is accessed by holding down both footswitches while plugging in a power supply). There is also a noise gate key input so you can optionally trigger the gate with an external signal, this is particularly useful if you have additional pedals before the Heavy Menace in your signal chain (such as a low gain pedal for stacking), splitting your signal before those pedals and sending a clean signal to the gate key input ensures the gate will behave consistently regardless of changes to the signal at the main input. The Gate key input requires an 1/8" TS or TRS cable. The pedal is true bypass by default but this can be changed to buffered bypass using the advanced configuration mode (great for protecting against signal loss over long cable runs).

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