The Empire was also one of the first MM’s that I acquired after starting to follow Raul’s thread (the first was the Azden MP50VL).
I find the comments re the FR’s warmth interesting and I may be reading too much into them and halcro’s choice to point this out re the FR and not the Empire. I don’t disagree about the description, but it is interesting because to my ears the Empire is even more so in the camp of warm and full-bodied. The FR, compared to the Empire, seems to rob the slide guitar of body. When Ry plays in the uppermost range of the instrument it almost sounds as if the strings are suspended in air as opposed to being attached to the body of the guitar. The sound in that range is thinner and more metallic, while with the Empire the guitar’s resonating cavity is more easily heard for what I think is a better tonal balance.
For me this comparison highlights one of the most interesting aspects of system tuning. It also goes to a question that halcro asked early on: Is it possible to hear that his system’s amplification is ss?  My system is all tube and in that context, while the Empire sounds very good it tends to tilt the balance too far in the direction of warmth and the sound can be overly full without enough incisiveness in transients and high frequencies in general. What I am hearing in the context of halcro’s ss based system sounds fantastic. The Empire seems a better fit in a ss system than in an all tube system like mine.
I find the comments re the FR’s warmth interesting and I may be reading too much into them and halcro’s choice to point this out re the FR and not the Empire. I don’t disagree about the description, but it is interesting because to my ears the Empire is even more so in the camp of warm and full-bodied. The FR, compared to the Empire, seems to rob the slide guitar of body. When Ry plays in the uppermost range of the instrument it almost sounds as if the strings are suspended in air as opposed to being attached to the body of the guitar. The sound in that range is thinner and more metallic, while with the Empire the guitar’s resonating cavity is more easily heard for what I think is a better tonal balance.
For me this comparison highlights one of the most interesting aspects of system tuning. It also goes to a question that halcro asked early on: Is it possible to hear that his system’s amplification is ss?  My system is all tube and in that context, while the Empire sounds very good it tends to tilt the balance too far in the direction of warmth and the sound can be overly full without enough incisiveness in transients and high frequencies in general. What I am hearing in the context of halcro’s ss based system sounds fantastic. The Empire seems a better fit in a ss system than in an all tube system like mine.