The empeg does go off with the ignition OK but if I press one of the buttons it will come back on without turning ignition back on, so I figured all is well wiring wise.

That is the correct behavior for the ignition wire on the player. I assume that it's eventually dropping out of standby mode and fully powering off after the pre-set amount of time (configurable in emplode). So most likely the player is not the reason the battery is being drained. What is your power-off time set to?

Can you check to make sure the amplifiers are shutting off when the player goes into standby mode? If not, I would suspect something wrong with the way the amp remote wire is connected.