better way to accomplish this kind of setup?

You do not want to bridge the F/R outputs of the empeg. Strange things will happen if you do that -- you only want to bridge them through some sort of switcher.

There is no need to bridge the F/R outputs in any case -- they are identical, unless you have the fader on the empeg set to something other than "Center" or if you have your equalizer set up for 4-channel operation.

Just run your front outputs of the empeg into the auxiliiary inputs of the Pioneer and you will be set. Remember that you will be able to use the empeg's 20 band equalizer, volume settings, and left/right balance controls on the signal you feed into the Pioneer.

tanstaafl.