Palmer Pocket Amp MK2 Guitar Preamp

Sight Unseen

Bought after just checking it out online. After fiddling to find a good setting for me, I now have 3 great overdrive sounds when I toggle the guitar through the Palmer on, and 3 great clean sounds when I use the pedal as DI. As a rhythm guitar who likes a simple set-up, I am very happy with my 6 sounds, with the reverb on the mixing board. Super cool. Get the power of my PA, and don't have to lug an extra guitar amp to the show.

Wonderful sound

This babe had a wonderful Mesa Boogie amp modeling, i was truly happy to have it, it was my "mesa boogie" in a pocket, if you know what i mean... Unfortunally after less than 2 years it started to give problems with the jumpers...

The idea was to input backing tracks from digital devices and play along with my guitar while listening through my headphones.

Disaster!

The various sound modes are horribly unbalanced among them.

The audio input buzzes.

The sound through the headphone output is colored massively

not top but very working for recording

Not top but it works very well for recording purposes

Nice little tool

I use it as a practice / playing / recording tool at home, through headphone or monitors. It is especially practical for silent practice through headphones.

It's quite versatile as you can get a few decent tones. In my opinion, brit and vintage sounds are especially nice both in clean and crunch mode, while the 'heavy mode' is rather unusable.

The overall build and foot switch look solid, but the knobs and tone switches that are a bit on the cheap side.

All in all, good value for the money.

A litte Swiss-Army knife of tone & practicality

So it's not the poor man's Kemper, and it probably doesn't aim to be, but it's hard not to like this little, sturdy metal box which offers excellent features when used as a demo/home/on-the-road sketchpad for guitar ideas & sounds, but also offers decent enough tonal quality to end up being used on some actual recordings, or in some volume-constrained live situations.

It lacks an fx loop i/o or a high/low sensitivity input, but it does have other goodies such as a phones output and a stereo line aux input for background audio practice purposes.

More importantly, the 3 amp types are relatively realistic and the 3 sound modes are not bad, never too sterile or fizzy or cheap sounding (Palmer has always known what they are doing, when it comes to guitar sounds!), and the 3 simulated microphone positions for the cabinet simulations are quite convincing.

A little winner!

Palmer Pocket Amp - a nice way to play with your headphones.

First impressions were great! Plugged in my headphones and started to tweak the settings. I could easily get some american/vintage sounds from it.

This pedal feels solid and feels like it is built like a tank.

Build quality is great!

You can use batteries and a power adapter. So it is a great product when you want to travel with your guitar and practice on the road!

Good, affordable amp option when needed

I am using this as a pre-amp to send directly to a battery powered PA we use for street performance. I was trying to make a multi-effects unit work, but hated all the programming and needed a simpler option. Just wanted to use stomp-boxes, but am not using an amp in these situations. This allows battery-power and does the job of amping the guitar before it hits the PA and makes things sound a bit more guitar-like. Convenient for this situation.

Great step up from the Mk1 version, still some flaws in the design

My application for this unit, is to use it as at a pedal-based clean platform amp to use in conjunction with an FRFR-speaker and with some compact pedals I particularly like.

The quality of the sounds has greatly improved since the Mk1-version, although I tend to stick to the the vintage clean preset. This presents me with a decent and tweakable Fender-esque clean canvas.

The pedal is very suitable to use in combination with other pedals.

The built in XLR-out is not at all good-sounding, so an additional amp sim-DI or IR-loader is advisable before going straight into the board.

As a stand alone unit, it is very practical (e.g. hotel room playing with headphones) but the sounds of the higher gain stuff are not very convincing.

Sonically, neither the Mk1 or the Mk2 can really compete with the Tech-21 GT-2 SansAmp the design was clearly based on.

Overall, a practical little unit with some pretty nice features; if it were really suitable as a one-stop solution for amp modeling, amp sim AND DI, this would potentially be a five star product on pedalboards everywhere. Maybe the Mk3-version? I would happily pay quite a bit extra if the DI were more usable (and included amp sim functionality, e.g. Palmer pdi 03 jb).

Excellent to replace an amp!

Currently using in a small church.

This guitar preamp is great for playing in places where you just cant use your amp, in my case is just very complicate to use my amp with a very low stage volume, so this was a great tool for me.

Also its very useful for practice at home, you can plug your computer or phone in with a mini jack and just plug your headphones directly in it.

You can cut some bad frequencies with it (great tool in live playing).

For me the sound is very accurate and similar to some amps, however its not the same, but some times you just get tired in carrying around your 30kg amp to every small gig...

This can save your back some pain and can save your gig.

The xlr out is just great!