empress guitar pedals Empress Effects Heavy Menace Distortion

Heavy Menace Limited Edition

With its wide range of high-gain tones, advanced EQ, and adaptive noise gate, the Heavy Menace has carved out a spot as one of the most versatile distortion pedals around. For Halloween 2025, we’re dressing it up in a limited-edition opalescent blue-purple sparkle colourway that draws your eye like a scrying pool.

The artwork comes straight from the original sketches that Ottawa tattoo artistKaylie Seaver created for the Heavy Menace, making this not just stunning, but a collectible piece of Empress history.

We’re only making 350 of these. Our last two limited runs (ParaEq MKII Deluxe Black and ZOIA 10k) vanished in days. Miss this one, and you’ll be haunted by it forever.

Features

• Three versatile distortion modes - Lite(ish), Heavy, and Heavier
• Footswitchable noise gate
• Three-band EQ with sweepable mid frequency
• Weight control to sculpt low frequency response
• Linked or independent switching of the distortion and gate
• Gate key input (⅛” TS or TRS)
• True bypass or buffered bypass

ENHANCED EQ

We’re obsessed with EQ, and the 3-band circuit on Heavy Menace is one of our best.

Our Weight control adjusts a high-pass filter in the distortion circuit to shape low-end character. Turn it up for a thick, full sound, or turn counterclockwise for a tight response that’s perfect for palm muting and extended-range guitars.

Midrange is a key element of a great distorted sound, so the mid frequency is sweepable from 200 Hz to 2.5 kHz to dial in the sweet spot for your guitar and amp. Scoop for a tight, aggressive sound, or push to add definition and cut through a mix.

TRUE OR BUFFERED BYPASS

The Heavy Menace offers both true bypass for maximum transparency, and buffered bypass to protect against signal loss over long cable runs.

ADAPTIVE GATE

Players loved the gate on the original Heavy. Envelope followers in the circuit respond to your playing, letting sustained notes decay naturally but clamping down quickly during fast stops.

On the Heavy Menace, this gate is now footswitchable, with two available modes of operation. In normal bypass mode, the gate doesn’t affect the signal if the distortion is off, while independent bypass mode is like having separate distortion and gate pedals.

We’ve also added a 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. Split a clean signal with a pedal like our Buffer+ and connect it to the Gate Key Input, and the gate will behave consistently regardless of changes at the main input.