Empty Head Effects - The Lover | Falling Man | The External/ Internal - Review
Raw and powerful!
In the past year, I came across a brand new pedal manufacturer - Empty Head Effects - that really drew my attention. The raw and beautiful aesthetic alongside the warbly and lofi sound of the External/Internal and Falling Man pedals was definitely something new. That made me contact Nic - the man behind Empty Head Effects - to discuss a potential collaboration and review of his pedals on our website. Nic is such a cool, kind, and friendly guy we ended up talking from time to time about his designs, how he manages to do everything by himself, and his upcoming projects so today is the day that I’m doing a full review of all Empty Head Effects pedals! The External/ Internal, Falling Man, and the brand new overdrive The Lover!
Nic’s excitement and will to pursue this helped him release 3(!) pedals in just one year which is mindblowing when you consider he’s just one person doing all the work for Empty Head. Design, Development, Assembly, Marketing, etc., are all done by a single person and he managed to ship his pedals all around the world! Hats off to you my friend!
One thing that is present in all three Empty Head Effects pedals is their raw and unpolished (in a good way) nature. They look handmade and industrial and they sound gritty and full of texture. I get a very similar vibe to Fairfield Circuitry which is one of my favorite pedal companies due to the aesthetic and character these pedals have and I love it. Another thing that is all over these pedals is the openness of their controls. Some pedal or music gear manufacturers tend to limit their controls to revolve around the sweet spot while others like to leave them open for the user to explore. I remember having a conversation with Yiannis, the co-owner and co-founder of Dreadbox, where he told me that he always leaves all the “bad“ settings untouched and allows the user to really push his instruments to their limits even if they get to unusable territories. The same thing goes for Empty Head Effects. You can really push the controls to the maximum and explore their full sonic potential! Lastly, all three pedals have a mysterious labeling on their knobs and switches. For me that I test and use dozens of pedals each month definitely tests my memory skills (which suck big time) but for the average user, it urges you to experiment and trust your ears without trying to get a specific setting each time!
Before we start diving into the pedals, I wanted to add a few words from Nic - the founder of Empty Head Effects. I decided to ask him a few questions to learn more about his process and journey!
Question: So Nic, wanna tell us how Empty Head Effects started?
Nic: Hey man, sure. Empty Head was born out of Covid downtime. Before my band decided to finish their new record and before my wife and I decided to have a kid, I had a lot of time on my hands. I started playing with circuits again which I hadn't since I was a student, building kits mostly, but the odd drive pedal experiment on veroboard. I realized when I started looking into the electronics and theory behind it I started learning again, for the first time, again, since I was a student. I loved it, I loved discovering how things worked, why they worked, why they were different from other electronic building blocks, and what each component was doing. I felt like a kid again in school, but this time I actually enjoyed it. Then I realized not only was building kits and trying to understand them, but actually, building your own and physically and theoretically exploring new ideas was in and of itself even more fascinating.
Q: What is the biggest challenge of being an independent pedal creator?
N: Content and sales. I love the creative aspects, the ideas and concepts behind them, the electrical design (although that's sometimes tiringly intricate), the layout, and thinking about how people will interact with it. At first, I loved building them, then it got really tiresome, but now I'm really starting to enjoy it again. The hardest part though is promoting them, knowing if what you're doing is interesting, relevant, or even good sometimes. Should I target specific people? Should I not care about who will want to use it and just design for myself? Should I promote it like this, or like that? Who will see it? Why is no one buying this one, but they like that one? The uncertainty of it all is quite exhausting. I was told by someone I trust that sheer determination and sticking to it is 90% of the battle. Once you've been around long enough you have enough perpetual motion, so for now I'm sticking to that and people seem to be coming along for the ride. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed and thumbs pressed (as the Germans say).
Q: Both the External/ Internal & the Falling Man have a very lofi character. What was your inspiration behind making these two pedals?
N: Both of these pedals are based around a PT2399 chip which is an extremely common delay chip being used in many of your favourite pedals. It alone is nothing special, a cheap chip designed to be used in karaoke machines, but it can be abused so heavily to create some incredible effects that designers keep rediscovering it time and again and using it for interesting new things. There's not much it can't do honestly when it comes to time-based effects. This thing of itself gives both these pedals a lot of their characteristic sound. The inspiration behind The External / Internal came from a cult classic pedal called the Noise Ensemble which rattled around in DIY forums about 10-20 years ago. It's amazing, completely wild and is fundamentally what the green channel is, but with near-infinite sustain even without being super loud. I wanted to take the effect of having this weird pitch-shifted, modulated terrifying sound, but find a way to tame it and use it within a clean capacity. Falling Man was actually just an experiment in theoretical/conceptual design. What happens when you use your input signal to control the delay time of a delay pedal? And how far can we simplify the controls of a delay? And fundamentally, it hasn't faltered from that concept, just a little bit of filtering and careful switch design.
Q: What’s your favorite thing and your favorite settings on your new pedal - The Lover?
N: The Lover is a super simple pedal. Designing it was kind of an exercise in simplicity and actually started as a deep dive into the Electra distortion. I love how simple it is and how it clearly has a specific sound to it, but it's not 'perfected' in any way. It's a raw not very round, not very filtered drive pedal, and despite having lots of different sonic places you can take it, it still feels a little unhinged and unpredictable. My favorite settings are naturally everything up to 100% (but perhaps not Whispers (Volume) or you might destroy your amp). I think we should all be more confident throwing up all our settings to the max and just seeing what happens.
Q: I know you’re always working on new ideas and designs! Any hints on what we should expect next?
N: I've had something that I've been working on for a long time now which was meant to come out second. Falling Man then The Lover both beat it to the post. I've got the 4th (maybe 5th) iteration of the PCB which I need to build up and test as soon as I find some time. The original concept was so simple and beautiful I loved it for it's simplicity. But I kept finding I wanted just a touch more depth to explore within the same sonic world and I think perhaps I might be there, but this is the most complex design I've done to date, so it's taking a lot of balancing. Sonically it's chaotic, unpredictable, rhythmical, and interactive. It was important to me that this one went through the full development process and didn't come out underbaked, and I'm really glad I've done so. It's in a really interesting place and I can't say I know anything that's quite like it right now. Thanks for having me Alexandr and for your amazing creativity with my pedals.
So now, let’s go through each pedal to learn what they all do and how they feel! Spoiler alert: The Lover is my favorite one!
The External/ Internal
The very first Empty Head Effects pedal was the External/ Internal and it made quite a buzz when it first got released. This is a modulation pedal but not your standard modulation pedal. At its core, there is the legendary PT2399 chip that’s been mainly used for delay pedals and effects and can be found literally in hundreds (or even thousands) of effects. In The External/ Internal, it is used to create modulation effects instead of your typical delay. After all, delay is the mother of most modulation effects! On top of it, there are a few gain stages to boost and drive your signal way more than you’d expect!
It has five knobs, a switch, and two footswitches - one to activate the pedal and one to activate the External/ Internal. The Loudness knob is your overall volume and the Unquieting knob is an overdrive control. You can always bring up the volume and reduce the drive to get a very clean tone but since the Unquieting must be on to produce sound you’ll always have some kind of crunchiness to your tone. The drive sounds are very rich and full without getting a ton of distortion so you already have a beefed-up tone without using the other controls.
The modulation section can be controlled by the Anxiety and Depth knobs. Anxiety is your modulation rate and Depth is - guess what - the depth control of the modulation. With those two you can create choruses, vibrato, or random warbly effects that we all love. The modulation waveform feels like a triangle wave and that’s why it’s more of a tape kind of effect rather than a standard sinewave modulation. The already overdriven sounds smear perfectly into modulation adding a lot to the Lofi character it has.
The Separation knob is something that you won’t often see on a pedal - there is one Doubler effect on the Chroma Console by Hologram Electronics that is somewhat close to this. Taking advantage of its delay chip, you can separate your dry signal from the wet signal and have it play with a very slight delay. That can result in two very cool effects. At short settings, you get a doubling effect having two signals with a very slight delay between them that thickens your signal by a ton. Doubling is used a ton by guitarist to add body to their music and now you have it on a pedal! If you push the knob further, you really start to hear the distinct signals resulting in a slapback delay that’s also a very common effect for adding more life to a guitar sound.
The switch enables the Self Mod which is such a cool little feature. It actually enables the input envelope modulation which means that your signal is modulated by its own amplitude. So the harder you play the more modulation you get! That is also tied to the Separation knob so the more separation you add the more prominent it will be. So if you want a more present and crazy modulation you can just flick the switch and there you have it.
Last but not least, there is the extra footswitch that activates the Internal side! Keep in mind that this does nothing if the Internal footswitch is bypassed. I honestly don’t know what exact circuit is behind it, but I know for sure that once you step on it you get a very raw and punchy distortion sound. Bonus tip: Make sure to adjust your Loudness and Unquieting levels before you enable it as it can get super loud and distorted! Having the External/ Internal footswitch on, your signal gets totally annihilated and becomes this shoegazy, crushing, fuzzy sound that is thick and loud.
The External/ Internal is a very dynamic and responsive pedal. This expressiveness is probably more profound when you use a guitar since it’s a very dynamic instrument on its own but you can also take advantage of it with synths and the velocity sensitivity. The sounds coming out of it are hollow and gritty, the modulation kind of dissolves in the drive sound, and it truly brings a lot of lofi character and warbly textures as you play with it. The separation knob which is really something new and unique adds an extra dimension to anything you play and I think plays an integral part in how this thing sounds…
Falling Man
The second Empty Head Effects pedal is the Falling Man! Falling Man used the same delay chip but this time is actually used for producing delay! Falling Man is a delay with a twist that can do pitch-shifting and modulation effects! There are only three knobs and a switch, plus the bypass footswitch. Stride is your delay time and Pace is your repeats plus delay volume control. So the shorter the repeats the less volume they have. Fall is where things get quirky since it introduces pitch shifting by messing up with your delay’s time. The Stumble/ Trip switch gets the pedal into a sort of feedback loop where it self modulates making the pitch-shifting effects more prominent and wild!
While in the Stumble mode which is the more standard one, you can get a typical delay effect by having the Fall knob all the way to zero. Here the maximum delay time is a bit shorter and you’ll have to boost the repeats to get a longer delay. Keep in mind that the repeats will self-oscillate when you’re at around 3-4 o’clock! As you start increasing the Fall is where the character of the pedal starts to show up. Fall creates pitch-shifting to lower octaves - hence the Falling Man name - that will respond to your dynamics and playing. I’ve discovered that with sustained sounds the falling effect is milder but when you play staccato, short notes, it creates a very fast, almost like a tape-stop effect which is super cool to play around with.
As with all pitch-shifting effects, things will get messy for sure. It’s a part of the process to find the sweet spots and have musical results. And when you do you can completely transform a melodic line to something new. Just like the External/ Internal, Falling Man is also very dynamic and responsive to your playing and allows you to create some very interesting effects that I haven’t seen anywhere else. I love the tape-stop effect that you can do. It’s like automating your pitch in Ableton and you can do it live and at will which is awesome!
The Lover
And now, I’m so happy to introduce you to the latest Empty Head Effects pedal - The Lover! The Lover is a drive pedal with 3 knobs and 3 switches that sounds pretty incredible to my ears! The Lover is a much simpler design compared to the other two but it also has a lot of features and it just sounds so good - especially on guitar as you’d expect from a drive pedal!
The three knobs are Heart, Lungs, and Whispers. Heart is your drive control and your first gain stage. It can be subtle but also very punchy as you turn the knob. Lungs will make your lower frequencies quieter and give your higher frequencies some more gain and fuzziness. Whispers is your volume control. Around 12 o’clock is unity so you can push it even more and it’ll start to also saturate and drive your sound. It’s a balancing game when you have more than one gain stages, so feel free to tweak at will!
There are also three switches. A Veil is a low pass filter that will cut some of the high frequencies and Loss is a high pass filter that will cut some low frequencies. Very simple and effective! And there are also trim pots inside the pedal to set their behaviors to your liking which is a very cool little touch. Compassion on the other hand activates a fuzz circuit that makes your sound gnarly! Being a switch is very handy as you can go immediately from a drive sound to a fuzz with a single flick.
I also used the Lover a lot with synths and samplers. The fact that you can push your volume knob (Whispers) can create a very nice sounding saturation combined with hotter line-level signals that come out of a synth. I quickly got obsessed trying out synth sounds using the Lover as a mild drive/ saturation and it worked perfectly. So lesson if the day: Experiment at will!
The Lover is probably the simplest to use out of the three. Nothing too complex here but I honestly think that it nails a great overdrive sound. It makes your guitar sound thick and detailed even when you have a lot of gain, it can be pushed by a lot, and the clean tones you can get are so beautiful and crisp. This is going to be my go-to drive pedal for a long time to come. I’ve fallen in love with the “cleaner” and milder drive tones you can get and its awesome drive tones that retain a lot of your original sound without dissolving it into an overdriven mess.
Conclusion
I’ve been blown away by all three pedals. They’re fresh, surprising, and full of character. And while they can definitely go to weirder, experimental territories, they’re all very easy to use and have fun with. Handmade, with extra care in all the small details, and a great sound make Empty Head Effects pedals a great option for people who want something that will help them explore new sonic territories without spending a fortune!
Through sinesquares.net and now from our re-vamped YouTube Channel I always loved doing reviews like this one. Helping out - just a tiny bit -small, independent brands that are usually a single person or a small team of people who bring so much love, excitement, and care to what they do is a huge inspiration and motive to me. And Empty Head Effects is a great example of that.
So make sure to show Empty Head Effects some love and check out their pedals! I also did a video review of The Lover to listen to how it sounds with guitar, synths, and drums and I’m planning to also do videos for the External/ Internal and the Falling Man so make sure to subscribe!
The Lover Video Review
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