So that there is no confusion, i'm running linux-2.3.47 and modutils-2.3.9.
I've got these lines in my modules.conf file:

alias usb usb-uhci
above usb-uhci empeg-car
below usb-uhci usbcore

this allows:

modprobe empeg-car

to load the modules in the order; usbcore, usb-uhci, empeg-car. Here's snippet from lsmod:

empeg-car               3092   1
usb-uhci               20552   0 (unused)
usbcore                54464   0 [empeg-car usb-uhci]

An ls -l of the device node is:

lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root            6 Jan 17 20:24 /dev/empeg-car -> empeg-car0
crw-r--r--   1 root     root     240,   0 Feb 22 12:49 /dev/empeg-car0

For what it's worth; the sym-link is not required, but may become useful when a second Empeg becomes necessary. :) emptool is currently running to /dev/empeg-car at the moment and I just finished uploading. So it's time to go! It's always a good excuse to leave when you've got 'new' music in the Empeg! ... Testing is such an important step. :)