As the Empeg case is not longer available (in the US anyway), I spent a day hunting around for a suitable carry case. I'm sure I'm not the first person to find that every padded case seems to be too big, too small, too bulky, or too thin to be effective as an Empeg carry case. After fruitless hours checking camera bags, laptop cases, and even games console carry cases in various stores, I finally came across a carry bag in The Walking Store in my local mall that looked to be about the right size - that is to say slightly larger than the empeg itself. The case has a zipped pocket on a front flap that opens to a thin zip down compartment that is just about the right size to carry a few short cables and a credit-card sized remote. It also has an external detachable mobile phone pocket which is useful.

The only thing is the bag isn't padded, but I took the gamble, plunked down my $30 and went to work. I took some Photos.

I found some thin cardboard, and some 1/2" and 3/4" thick polystyrene packing foam and raided my wife's sewing box for some black cotton fabric.

The empeg sits in the back on it's side - the bag is taller than it is wide. This suits me fine, as the weight is neither on the front faceplate or the rear connectors, but on the case siding. The padding comes up to cover 7/8s of the empeg on 3 sides, and about 2/3 on the remaining side. I did this for 2 reasons - there is an inside zip pocket that is still accessible, and I ran out of 1/2" foam. You may question the logic of this, but my motivations are to be able to carry my empeg on my shoulder rather than in the hand, and to protect against me accidentally dropping the case (or putting it down a bit hard). I'm not trying to protect against it being thrown across a room, and anything beats no case at all. I also trimmed an indentation into the pad that sits againsts the rear of the empeg so that it 'molds around' the iso connector.

The 3/4" polystyrene was cut using a hot putty knife so that it's width was the same as the empegs height (when sitting flat), and was used for the bottom and the 2 narrow sides of the case, and the 1/2" polystrene was cut to be as wide as the empeg is deep (ie front to back), + 1.5"

I then covered both flat faces of the foam with the thin cardboard - this adds rigidity to the foam and will help disperse any concentrated force (from a pointed object) across more of the foams surface area. All purpose glue worked a treat for this. After the glue had dried I covered the pieces in black cotton, and inserted them into the case.

The fit was very snug to begin with - I had to work the pieces in carefully, and the first few times I put the empeg in it was tricky to say the least. The square outside edges of the padding pieces would not allow the full volume of the case to be used, but after a week of usuage, the edges have given enough so that the empeg slides in easily but still has a snug fit.

The only thing I don't like about this case is that the top zip is central, which with the close size tolerance means that it can get in the way of inserting/removing the empeg, although my hands have quickly learned to avoid this happening.
What I really like about this case is the fact that it is stealth, ie it's not an obvious target for theft. It's not supposed to hold expensive hi-tech gear. You'd expect it to hold...whatever people might take on a short walk. A pair of sunglasses, a drink, a book, a rain-cagoule, certainly not an empeg
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