Most pedals do one thing. The best ones do one thing spectacularly. The Empress Effects Zoia does not know how many things it does, because the answer is different every time someone turns it on. Announce a reverb and it delivers. Ask for a phaser feeding an LFO-controlled delay with a side of ring modulation, and it delivers that too. Hand it over to an engineer who treats it as a Eurorack-style oscillator, and it delivers. This is not a multi-effects unit with a list of factory presets and a shallow editor. The Zoia is a modular synthesis environment squeezed into a 145 × 95 mm pedalboard footprint, built in Ottawa, Canada, and sold for $499. It arrived on a wave of disbelief in April 2019, fourteen months after Steve Bragg demoed it at Winter NAMM 2018 to a room of people who genuinely weren’t sure what they’d just seen.
The Company Behind It: Empress Effects, Ottawa
Steve Bragg founded Empress Effects in 2005, the year after he graduated from Queen’s University with a degree in electrical engineering. The origin story is almost suspiciously clean: a friend needed a tremolo with features that didn’t exist on the market; Bragg built it; the friend no longer needed it; Bragg sold it at a local Ottawa used-gear store; the store loved it and ordered ten. From there, Empress Effects was a company. Bragg followed the Tremolo with the Superdelay, which took him two years to design and remains a canonical benchmark for digital delay quality. As demand grew, Mike came on board to handle assembly, and Jay joined to design pedals. The lineup expanded through compressors, reverbs, tape-delay emulations and eventually the Reverb — a single-function pedal of extraordinary depth that foreshadowed how Empress thinks about expandable architectures. All of it made in Canada.
The Zoia was a different animal entirely. Bragg had been watching the Eurorack modular market grow and asking himself whether the signal-flow logic of modular synthesis — patch cables connecting discrete modules into a custom signal chain — could be translated into a pedalboard-format device controlled by buttons rather than physical cables. The answer turned out to be yes, but it took until January 2018 to show the world, and until April 2019 to ship. Fourteen months from public debut to retail delivery. The NAMM preview ran on a non-final firmware. The delay generated genuine anxiety in forums and significant excitement at Synthplex 2019, where Bragg showed the nearly-final unit. When boxes finally shipped in spring 2019, the pedal community had been primed for over a year. It was worth the wait.
What the Zoia Actually Is
Strip the mystique away and the Zoia is a programmable audio computer with a grid-based user interface. Forty colored LED buttons — arranged in an 8×5 grid — represent modules, connections, parameters, and pages. A single rotary encoder on the right side selects values and navigates menus. Four utility buttons (Page Left, Page Right, Back, Shift) handle navigation. Three footswitches at the bottom — Select, Scroll, and Bypass — provide live performance control. The screen is a small OLED display that shows module names, parameter values, and system messages.
The core idea is that each button in the grid represents a “module” — a self-contained audio or control function. You place a module on the grid by pressing a button, choosing from the menu via the rotary knob, and confirming. You connect modules to each other by holding two buttons simultaneously. Signal flows from left to right visually, but the actual routing is yours to define. The buttons light up in different colors by module category: blue for audio, green for control signals, yellow for interface modules, and so on. The color coding is not decorative — it’s functional, making the signal flow legible at a glance once you’ve spent an hour or two with the system.
At launch in 2019 the Zoia shipped with 20 ready-made effects modules — EQ, overdrive/distortion with flavors named Plexi, Germ, Classic, Pushed, and Edgy, fuzz, compressor, noise gate, phaser, flanger, chorus, vibrato, tremolo, envelope filter, ring modulator, cab simulator, two delay types, and five reverbs. But those are the simplified summary. The underlying architecture divides into 23 audio modules, 22 control source modules (LFOs, ADSRs, sequencers, random generators), 16 interface modules (MIDI in/out, CV in/out, expression input, external switch) and 3 analysis modules. As of firmware updates released through 2024, the total available module count has grown past 80. The December 2024 ZOIA 10K limited edition — 500 units made, beige body, bright blue OLED, celebrating 10,000 units sold — shipped with Firmware 5.0 and further additions to the library. The standard black ZOIA benefits from the same firmware.
The sixty-four onboard patch slots are user-writable. Each patch is a complete signal routing: every module placed, every connection made, every parameter set. Patches swap via the Scroll footswitch or via MIDI. The micro SD card slot provides backup, sharing, and the ability to import patches from the large community-maintained patch library. Empress maintains a patch-sharing ecosystem; thousands of community patches exist online, ranging from faithful emulations of classic pedals to entirely new instruments that could not have existed before the Zoia.
Specifications
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Origin | Canada (Ottawa, Ontario) |
| Announced | NAMM, January 2018 |
| Released | April 2019 |
| Street price (launch) | $499 USD / £479 GBP / €533 EUR |
| Current street price (used) | ~$380–450 excellent, ~$300–360 good |
| Audio conversion | 24-bit, 48kHz |
| Internal processing | 32-bit |
| Module grid | 40× multi-color LED buttons (8×5) |
| Utility buttons | 4 (Page Left/Right, Back, Shift) |
| Footswitches | 3 (Select, Scroll, Bypass) |
| Rotary encoder | 1 |
| Display | OLED |
| Audio modules | 23 |
| Control modules | 22 |
| Interface modules | 16 |
| Analysis modules | 3 |
| Total building-block modules | 80+ (grows with firmware updates) |
| Patch storage | 64 user-writable patches |
| Inputs | Left + Right ¼” (stereo) |
| Outputs | Left + Right ¼” (stereo) |
| Control Port | MIDI in/out + CV 0–5V in/out + expression + ext. switch (multi-function TRS) |
| MIDI | 2× 3.5mm TRS mini jacks (5-pin DIN adapters included) |
| Storage expansion | Micro SD card slot (card and adapter included) |
| Power | 9V DC, 2.1mm centre-negative, 300mA (not included) |
| Dimensions | 145mm (W) × 95mm (D) × 67mm (H) |
| Eurorack format variant | Zoia Euroburo (announced NAMM January 2020) |
| Limited edition | ZOIA 10K (December 2024, 500 units, beige/blue OLED, Firmware 5.0) |
A critical note for pedalboard builders: the 300mA current draw at 9V is significant. A standard daisy-chain supply running four or five other pedals off a single output will not have the headroom. Budget an isolated high-current output — 500mA to be safe — from a supply like a Strymon Zuma, Cioks DC10, or Walrus Audio Aetos. The Zoia does not accept a battery. This is not an oversight; the DSP running 32-bit floating-point operations at 48kHz needs stable, clean power, and a battery would die in minutes.
Famous Players
The Zoia’s player community skews toward artists who use it as a compositional tool rather than a set-and-forget pedal, which makes verifiable touring documentation somewhat thinner than for more conventional gear. Of the players the spreadsheet associates with this model, the picture is mixed.
Nick Reinhart (Tera Melos) is named as a Zoia user in multiple online lists, and his profile — arguably one of the most adventurous guitarists in experimental rock, willing to paint his pedals, flip Boss footpads, and run absurdly complex signal chains — makes the association feel intuitively right. But the documented primary sources do not bear it out for the Zoia specifically. Premier Guitar’s Rig Rundown with Reinhart, filmed in Nashville in January 2019 during the Treasures and Trolls EP tour, is comprehensive and accounted for all gear on his boards. His signal chain runs through Boss (BF-3 Flanger, DD-3 Delay, LS-2, TU-2), EarthQuaker Devices (Aqueduct, Arrows, Rainbow Machine, Tone Job), Line 6 DL4, Source Audio Nemesis, Meris and Red Panda units, Mantic Conceptual, Rainger FX, Roland, and EHX. No Empress gear appears anywhere in that rundown. The Zoia was already shipping by the time this rig was photographed; if it had been on the board, it would have been visible. Absent a later documented addition — a subsequent rig rundown, a pedalboard photo with captions, an interview — the Zoia–Reinhart connection is plausible but unverified.
Andy Othling (Lowercase Noises) is a New Mexico-based composer and ambient guitarist who runs one of the most thoughtful YouTube channels in the atmospheric guitar space. His work — slow, layered, pedal-intensive textures — is exactly the context where a Zoia thrives, and the ambient online community frequently names him alongside the pedal. However, no primary source emerged during research: no rig rundown, no pedalboard photo with caption, no interview quote specifically placing him on a Zoia. His name and the pedal’s name circulate together on forums and recommendation lists, which is a different thing. He may well own one; he is precisely the kind of musician who would. That remains an inference, not a confirmed fact.
Julien Baker is verified. Baker has documented on multiple occasions her exploration of the Zoia as a compositional instrument, describing watching a three-hour tutorial to learn it. She used it while creating the score for the documentary North By Current, with the pedal visible in HeadCount’s behind-the-scenes footage. Baker’s approach to the Zoia mirrors the broader artistic case for it: she treated it as a composing tool and a sound-design environment rather than a live effects pedal, building specific sonic architectures for specific pieces. The result is music that could not have been made with a conventional multi-effects unit. Baker is not in the guitarist database used for internal links on this site, so no link is provided here — but the documentation is solid.
Peter Holmström (The Dandy Warhols) is confirmed via his own Instagram post, in which he photographed his pedalboard and thanked Empress Effects for repairing his ZOIA with new switches, buttons, and screen. A repair job documented by the player is a solid chain of evidence: it indicates a unit used hard enough to need service, returned, and resumed active use. Holmström is not in the guitarist database; prose only here.
Sarah Lipstate, performing as Noveller, is documented on Equipboard as a Zoia user. Lipstate’s work — solo electric guitar processed into dense, cinematic drones and soundscapes, sometimes live-scored to film — is almost paradigmatically Zoia-appropriate. She is not in the guitarist database for internal linking on this site.
The broader Equipboard user count for the Zoia sits at 12 confirmed professional artists, which is modest against flagship multi-effects units like the Strymon Mobius (131 artists) or Line 6 Helix (98 artists). That number reflects the Zoia’s specialist appeal: it attracts the experimentally inclined, not the player who needs to recall 300 amp models with one tap.
Tone Recipes and Settings
1. Classic Shimmer — Built From Scratch
Place a Pitch Shifter module set to +12 semitones (one octave up). Route its output into a large Reverb module (long decay, high mix). Feed the Pitch Shifter input from a VCA (voltage-controlled amplifier), and control the VCA with an ADSR envelope triggered by an Audio Input Analysis module tracking the guitar signal. Result: the shimmer tail appears only when you play, fades naturally when you stop, and tracks the wet reverb level. This patch takes about 15 minutes to build and sounds better than most dedicated shimmer reverb pedals because every parameter is independently tunable.
2. Dynamic Tremolo — Faster When You Pick Harder
Build a standard LFO-controlled tremolo (LFO → VCA on the audio path). Then add an Envelope Follower module monitoring the guitar input. Route the envelope follower output to the LFO Rate parameter. Set the envelope-to-rate scaling so that a hard pick attack pushes the LFO into a rapid flutter; a gentle strum keeps it slow and lazy. This is the classic “auto-tremolo” trick. It’s impossible on a conventional tremolo pedal and takes under ten minutes in the Zoia.
3. Infinite Sustain Freeze
Route audio into a Looper module set to record a very short loop (50–100ms). Trigger the record via the footswitch, capture a chord moment, then toggle the looper to play mode with a fade from the direct signal to the looped layer. Add a slow LFO modulating the playback pitch slightly (±2–3 cents) and a generous Reverb after the looper. The chord hovers forever, breathing slightly. Free the looper record button and play melody over the top. This is a legitimate compositional technique used by ambient and post-rock players; the Zoia lets you wire it precisely to your preference.
4. Envelope-Controlled Octave Filter
Octave-down module tracking your guitar pitch, routed into a State Variable Filter. An Envelope Follower tracking your picking controls the filter cutoff frequency: soft picking = closed, dark, almost muted sub-octave; hard attack = filter opens into a nasal growl. Set the resonance at 30–40% for vowel character without self-oscillation. This is the classic analogue synth bass trick; on a guitar it gives you a Muse-era bass synth tone that responds to dynamics rather than requiring careful preset management.
5. Granular Texture Wash
Available via community patches or via Firmware 5.0 Granular algorithms on the ZOIA 10K: granular processing chops incoming audio into tiny fragments (grains), randomizes their playback pitch within a range, scatters them over a set duration, and fades them under a reverb tail. Set grain size to 80–200ms, scatter to maximum, pitch randomization to ±5 semitones, and reverb decay to 8 seconds. Strike a chord, hold it, and the Zoia begins dissolving it into a slowly evolving texture cloud. This territory overlaps with the Strymon Cloudburst and the Meris Polymoon, but built from modules it can be tuned in ways those fixed-architecture pedals cannot be.
How It Compares
The Line 6 Helix Floor and the Neural DSP Quad Cortex are the obvious industry benchmarks for capable multi-effects processing — and they are emphatically not what the Zoia is. The Helix and Quad Cortex are amp-modelling-first platforms with effects blocks organised in a conventional serial/parallel signal chain. They are deep and excellent. They cannot, however, let you build a new type of effect that doesn’t already exist in their block library. The Zoia can. These are answers to different questions, and they’re not in competition.
The Kemper Profiler and Fractal Audio Axe-Fx III Mark II share the same profile: exceptionally deep amp simulation platforms with comprehensive effects sections. Again, a different question. A player who needs to nail a specific amp sound every night at a touring level will not choose the Zoia as their primary processor. A player who wants to construct a sound that doesn’t exist yet and doesn’t care about amp modelling will not choose the Kemper or the Axe-Fx.
The Eventide H90 Harmonizer (Rank 606) is perhaps the most interesting comparison. The H90 is also a deep, programmable dual-engine effects unit with 74 algorithms, a community of serious users, and a learning curve. The H90 gives you outstanding versions of known effects types — Eventide’s pitch-shifting, modulation, and reverb algorithms are benchmark-setting — but those effects are built and maintained by Eventide’s engineers. The Zoia gives you the ability to build any effect yourself, including effects that nobody has thought of yet, using synthesis modules rather than curated algorithms. The H90 is a premium destination; the Zoia is a blank canvas.
The closest modular-synthesis peer in a pedalboard format is the Make Noise Strega or the Moog Moogerfooger series — neither of which is a direct Zoia competitor. In the pedal-format modular niche, the Zoia faces the Poly Effects Beebo (a touchscreen-based modular platform with a similar philosophy) and the Condor Audio Flux (a newer entry). The Beebo’s touchscreen UI is arguably faster to learn; the Zoia’s grid feels more physical and tactile under the fingers once you know it. Neither has the Zoia’s community patch ecosystem.
Against a Fender Deluxe Reverb: the Deluxe Reverb is the answer if you want a great amplifier with built-in spring reverb and tremolo, period. The Zoia doesn’t model amplifiers and doesn’t pretend to. Run it into a Deluxe Reverb as a front-end effects generator and the combination is exceptionally powerful — the amp does what amps do, the Zoia does what nothing else does.
Buying Guide
The Zoia sells new at $499 USD. Used prices have settled in the $380–450 range for excellent condition units, $300–360 for good condition with cosmetic wear. The grid buttons and encoders are mechanical and can wear with heavy use; the limited-edition ZOIA 10K was offered partly as a vehicle to ship units with improved switches and components alongside Firmware 5.0. Before buying used, ask whether the buttons all register cleanly and whether the unit has been updated to the latest firmware. If switches feel spongy or intermittent, factor in repair cost — Empress Effects services their own pedals and the community has documented DIY switch replacement.
The Zoia Euroburo is a separate product: the same processing architecture in Eurorack module format (3U), with direct CV and gate connections rather than the Control Port’s multi-function TRS approach. If you already have a Eurorack system, the Euroburo integrates natively into it. If you don’t, the standard Zoia is the correct choice — the pedalboard format is more practical for most guitarists and the underlying capability is identical.
Who needs it: players in post-rock, ambient, noise, math rock, or experimental contexts who are willing to invest 10–20 hours in genuine learning before the pedal pays back. Players who have already exhausted the factory preset libraries of conventional multi-effects units and are tired of choosing between 200 versions of reverb rather than designing one. Players who score to picture, compose in real time, or want a live instrument rather than a playback device.
Who should probably pass: players who need a reliable, fast-access set of known effects for cover gigs, studio session work, or high-volume touring schedules with no time for deep learning. The Zoia rewards patience and curiosity. It punishes the player who needs it to work immediately without study.
Ownership Notes
The Zoia’s learning curve is real but not impenetrable. The basic workflow — place a module, set parameters, connect modules — is logical and can be grasped in under an hour. Building a patch that sounds exactly like what you heard in your head takes longer: expect the first 5–10 hours to be exploratory rather than immediately productive. The payoff is that, by hour 20, you understand signal flow at a level that makes every other effects pedal you own easier to understand and use.
The community is one of the Zoia’s unambiguous strengths. The patch-sharing ecosystem means you can load a community-built patch, study how it’s wired, modify it, and learn faster than building from zero. Empress Effects maintained active firmware development through the ZOIA 10K milestone. The manual is comprehensive and readable. There are multiple multi-hour YouTube tutorials specifically for guitar players.
Power discipline matters. Isolate the Zoia on its own output. Do not daisy-chain it. Budget 300mA minimum, 500mA for headroom. The unit is highly sensitive to power supply noise; a dirty supply on a budget board will introduce hum and digital artifacts that do not exist when power is clean.
The micro SD card slot enables patch backup and community patch loading. Back up your patches before any firmware update. The procedure is documented in the manual and takes under two minutes. It is the single most important maintenance habit for Zoia owners.
FAQ
Is the Empress Effects Zoia a guitar pedal or a synthesizer?
Both, depending on what you build with it. It processes incoming audio the same way any effects pedal does, including guitar signals, and it contains oscillator and synthesis modules that allow it to generate its own sound without any input signal. Most guitarists use it as an effects platform and treat the synthesis capabilities as one feature set among many.
How hard is the Zoia to learn?
The basic workflow is learnable in an afternoon. Building complex patches from scratch takes weeks of practice. The community patch library lets you shortcut the learning curve by loading pre-built patches and studying their architecture before you build your own. Empress Effects’ own documentation and third-party tutorial videos are extensive and well-produced.
Does the Zoia model amplifiers?
No. It includes a cab simulator module, which can approximate the effect of a speaker cabinet on a DI signal, but it does not contain amp modeling in the sense of profiling or emulating specific amplifiers. For amp modeling, the Helix, Quad Cortex, Kemper, or Axe-Fx are the correct platforms. The Zoia is designed to live in front of, or in the effects loop of, a real amplifier.
Can I use the Zoia without knowing synthesis theory?
Yes, via community patches and the pre-built effects modules. Understanding synthesis concepts — LFO, VCA, envelope, filter — will dramatically accelerate your ability to build original patches and modify existing ones, but it is not a prerequisite for getting sound out of the unit on day one.
What power supply does the Zoia need?
9V DC, centre-negative, 2.1mm barrel, minimum 300mA. The power supply is not included. Use an isolated output, not a daisy chain. Budget 500mA per output to be safe. Recommended supplies: Strymon Zuma, Cioks DC10, Walrus Audio Aetos, TrueTone 1Spot Pro CS12.
What is the ZOIA Euroburo?
The Euroburo is the same processing engine in Eurorack format (3U height), announced at NAMM 2020. It integrates directly with CV/gate Eurorack systems via native patch cables rather than the TRS Control Port of the standard Zoia. If you have a Eurorack case, the Euroburo is the more powerful integration. If you don’t, it’s not worth building a rack to access it — the standard Zoia’s Control Port already handles CV and MIDI.
What happened to the ZOIA 10K edition?
Empress Effects released 500 units of the ZOIA 10K in December 2024 to celebrate the milestone of 10,000 units sold. It shipped in a beige colorway with a bright blue OLED display and included Firmware 5.0, which added further module types. The circuit is identical to the standard Zoia; the 10K is a collector’s variant, not a performance upgrade. Firmware 5.0 was also made available to all existing Zoia owners.
How does the Zoia compare to a conventional multi-effects unit?
A conventional multi-effects unit — Line 6 Helix, Boss GT-1000, DigiTech RP series — presents a library of designed effects that you select, chain, and adjust within fixed parameter ranges. The Zoia presents raw building blocks that you assemble into effects yourself. The Helix will always be faster to use on a gig where you need 12 known sounds reliably accessible. The Zoia will always be more capable for a player who wants to create a sound that isn’t in any library.