Red Witch Empress

The Red Witch Empress is an analog chorus and vibrato pedal from Red Witch, a New Zealand-based effects pedal specialist founded and designed by Ben Fulton. It began as a hand-wired chorus pedal in a chrome finish that Fulton handmade in 2004, and it grew into one of the maker's best-known products, helped by a high-profile user: Andy Summers used the Empress Chorus exclusively for all his chorus sounds on the Police reunion tour¹².

The Empress line is now discontinued. Red Witch lists the Empress Chorus as discontinued and sold out, and points players to its successor, the Empress Deus Chorus Vibrato, which carries the original's features and tone in a stereo, all-analog package².

History and versions

The first Empress was the Original Chrome Empress, hand wired by Ben Fulton in 2004 in the original chrome finish. Red Witch later pulled two of these units from its vaults as new old stock and offered them at 500 USD each, describing them as rare and noting the price is for one unit¹.

The Empress Chorus that followed became, in Red Witch's words, the maker's most beloved pedal. It carried a Mix control for the wet/dry blend sent to the output, switching between Vibrato and Chorus modes, true bypass switching and a sturdy die-cast enclosure, at an MSRP of $379.95 as reviewed by Premier Guitar. Its stock setting offered the input staging of its predecessor, the Medusa⁵. Internally, the Empress used a 1024 stage BBD, the bucket brigade delay chip that does the actual pitch-wobbling work in an analog chorus⁶.

In 2021 Red Witch reintroduced the pedal as the Empress Deus Chorus Vibrato, an all-analog stereo pedal available at launch for $249. Guitar World reported that it is based mostly on the original Empress design, featuring the unique VOICE control of the original plus a secondary Vibrato/Chorus toggle switch giving access to a wide collection of modulation tones, and a DARK mode. Red Witch says the Deus gives access to the exact same sounds and circuit as Andy Summers' original unit, and that it currently ships with a limited edition black knob option³⁷⁴.

The version history at a glance:

Andy Summers and other players

The Empress's best-known credential is Andy Summers of The Police. Red Witch says the original Empress Chorus was used exclusively by Andy Summers for all chorus sounds on the Police reunion, and that when Summers elected to use the Empress Chorus Vibrato as his sole chorus pedal for the Police reunion world tour, it was a landmark moment for the maker²⁶. The maker's pages date the reunion differently: one says 2006, another says 2007³⁸.

Guitar World also names Faith No More's Jon Hudson among the notable guitarists who have used the Empress⁴.

What reviewers said

Premier Guitar reviewed the Empress chorus/vibrato pedal and found a lot of range in it, describing choruses that run from CE-1 and CE-2 thickness to liquid warble, with the pedal's real forte in the more spaced-out sounds, comparing that territory to a vintage Electro-Harmonix PolyChorus without the noise. The review's verdict on the vibrato side was direct⁵:

Not every review was unqualified. Guitar.com's 2016 round-up review of Red Witch pedals, covering the Empress Chorus Vibrato at £189, found the voicing control to be generally quite noisy⁹. That is the one recurring criticism in the published coverage of the line.

For the successor, Guitar World reported Red Witch's own description of the Deus's range, from "super-spanky sparkling cleans" to "over-the-top, sea-sick-inducing, pitch-bending wobble," and noted the brand's bold claim that it is "the most versatile analog chorus ever made"⁴.

How the Empress differs from the Deus

The practical differences between the original and its replacement come down to stereo and controls. The original Empress Chorus was a mono analog chorus/vibrato pedal with a Mix control and mode switching²⁵. The Empress Deus is a stereo, analog chorus and vibrato pedal, so it can feed two amplifiers or a stereo effects loop, and it adds the VOICE control carried over from the original, the DARK mode and the Vibrato/Chorus toggle switch³⁷⁴. Red Witch's position is that the Deus preserves the exact circuit and sounds of Andy Summers' unit while adding those options³.

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