Empress Effects celebrates 10,000 units of Zoia sold - with a Special '10K' 500 limited run edition

I was one of the early movers on the Zoia - all the way back in 2019, it’s incredible really that 10,000 units of this pedal have been sold to-date. Right from the start I called it out as more of a tabletop device - and one more at home with modular synth types really.

For the average guitarist - the control interface is ever somewhat clunky, and doesn’t really allow fluid tweaking on the fly like we’re used to - as you only have a singular rotary encoder. And moreover no Bluetooth connected App - which I would have thought should be essential.

I kind of predicted the Euroburo edition - with all the CV ports - perfect for the synth crowd. And I suggested we needed a further evolution of the core Zoia for guitar players - which hasn’t happened.

At its core this is a really incredible Sound-Design Modular Multi-FX - while it has a very steep learning curve, and needs a lot of patience to set up and customise your own effects. There are also some processing limitations which have caused challenges at various junctures - as the way the whole system is encoded is rather intensive and heavy-load for that level of processor.

For those that know it and love it though - this is a superb Sound Design unit that you can turn to pretty much any musical activity, while it’s certainly not for everyone, and could to with some significant usability enhancements in my opinion.

I’ve still held onto my unit, but not used it much of late - it’s likely several firmware releases behind now, and where the upgrade process is overly complex - involving loading and transferring data on an SD Card - which is very 20 years ago really!

That said - it’s obviously a well loved and versatile unit which many are putting to fantastic use.

The Zoia 10K is limited to just 500 units - at the usual price of $549, available for order from the Empress Effect Webstore right now!