u/ontic00

I used to throw songs over videos clipped together from movies or TV shows more often. It's been a while, but I really liked their new track "Dragonfire," so it inspired me to make one with clips of Smaug from The Hobbit. 😀 I wanted to go a bit longer, and thought "For I Am Death" worked really well for his death scene, so I added parts of that in at the end, too.

I added in the gold scene from The Desolation of Smaug at the beginning because I thought it worked well with Taylor singing about the gold being gone. I also think the ending of her repeatedly singing "fire" works really well over Bard, well, firing the black arrow - it has a double meaning! 😀

Edit: I was also thinking, if they ever do a cover album, I think Taylor's voice would work really well on "The Last Goodbye". Would be cool if they did a soft rock version of it!

Some more detailed pictures of these three pedals for anyone considering between them. Also, here is a playlist with examples of the pitch-shifting, delays, and NAM file playability of all three (plus a blind test between the GP-50's and Pocket Master's delay and pitch-shifting): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf0yKRon7f8&list=PLxMvz12ZxvCdUUGQzVFEvE-wbyXyvPI0_&pp=sAgC

I ended up deciding to keep the Pocket Master. I'm primarily plan to use it as a headphone amp, so the portability sacrifice wasn't worth it for me. The GP-50 didn't sacrifice too much portability but also didn't add many extra features, while the GP-180 added quite a few extra features but was a large portability sacrifice. If there was a GP-50-sized device with all the effects of the GP-180, I would probably have opted for that. So I'm hoping Valeton eventually upgrades the GP-50, or maybe Sonicake brings some of the extra effects to a Pocket Master 2.

Also, even though it lacked some of the delays the GP-50 and GP-180 had, I did kind of like the delays they shared best on the Pocket Master. They sounded a bit warmer to me (and I tend to prefer warmer tape-style delays). Though the delays on all three are quite good - I'm super happy with them and plan to not only replace my Mustang Micro as a headphone amp, but will also be using the PM for delay into my board and selling my EHX Grand Canyon.

TL;DR Delays all sound similar though the GP-180 has some nice extra ones if you're into stereo delays. Pitch-shifting also all sounds similar, though the GP-180 has a new "Hammy" mode that shifts the pitch smoothly rather than noticeably up by semi-tones (though it still sounds similarly glitchy, especially the high-octaves). GP-180 is by far the least portable due to its size, and the Pocket Master is durable enough for a strap or desk but not recommended for a pedalboard. Like them all better than the Mustang Micro - love the extra features and a proper output to plug into a pedalboard or amp along with a headphone out, while still being fairly portable (especially the Pocket Master and GP-50).

I've had the Mustang Micro for a couple years now but was curious about these re-chargeable pedals with options to also run into my pedalboard for a while now. Valeton had a bunch of Memorial Day deals on their eBay store, so I picked up all three to try out since they have a 30-day return policy.

I've only played with them a bit so far, but here are my initial thoughts. The Pocket Master came first and I definitely like it better than the Mustang Micro. I was worried everything wound sound the same like a Flamma headphone amp I tried out a while back, but it sounded a bit better than the Mustang Micro in my opinion. It also has way more options, is very easy to navigate, and is nearly as portable as the Mustang Micro. So I would definitely recommend the Pocket Master over most headphone amps after just a bit of playing around with it.

Comparing it to the bigger, sturdier units, each upgrade I feel gets a bit clearer with the sound. It's a bit more noticeable going from the Pocket Master to the GP-50, but even that is only a slight improvement in clearness. The main effects I was interested in were the pitch-shifting and the delays. The delays are good and not too far off of the delays on my EHX Grand Canyon (which I was also hoping to replace with one of these) - besides the slight improvement in clarity, all the delays sound similar on all of them. The GP-180 does have a couple more models, which are especially good if you like playing stereo delays. I don't really play stereo delays so for me it's not a huge selling point, but if you do the GP-180 is the best one for you. I like the Tube tape delay for a murkier delay, the magnetic tape delay for a clearer delay, and the sweep echo or ring echo for crazier-sounding delays.

For the pitch-shifting, there's not a huge improvement in sound at a single pitch for any of them. They do all go to +/- 2 octaves (I thought I had read they only went to 1 octave). The low octave is considerably better and sounds pretty good even on the Pocket Master all the way down to 9-12 semi-tones, and just gets a bit glitchy past that. The octave up is pretty glitchy the whole way - maybe about 3 semi-tones up sounds decent, but anything over that is quite glitchy. I think it's still useable and I don't think it sounds worse from what I remember of a Digitech RP255 unit I used to have, just different. The one thing with pitch that I like about the GP-180 is that it has two new pitch algorithms, and one of them is the "Hammy". It doesn't really improve how the pitch sounds if parked at a specific pitch, but it ties the pitch to a position parameter which lets you smoothly raise and lower the pitch, whereas the "Pitch" parameter (even on the GP-180) you can clearly hear the space going between the semi-tones. I don't think that is too much of a problem since you could always just transpose it and slide to the notes to get a smoother change, but the smoother shifting with "Hammy" would be especially nice if you use an expression pedal.

As far as portability, the GP-180 is definitely the worst by far as expected. It won't fit in my guitar case's storage compartment like the other two - I think you'd almost need a separate bag to carry it around with you. The other two are much closer in portability, though I wish the GP-50 had a strap clip - I feel it is light enough that it would work with one. With the inputs being on the side, you could technically use a cable into two unused jacks and hang it from your strap or somewhere, though I'm not sure if that would risk frying one of the jacks (you'd have to connect one of the outputs to the expression jack). If they made cables with plastic ends that didn't transfer anything, it would be perfect as a loop for the GP-50. Also, the GP-50 and GP-180 definitely have better durability with a metal chassis and everything. If you plan to use it mostly on a pedalboard, I definitely wouldn't consider the Pocket Master, but if you mostly want to use it on a strap or desk, the Pocket Master feels plenty durable.

I mostly got the GP-180 just to see if it was a huge improvement (especially with pitch-shifting) over the other ones, and while the smoother pitch-shifting on "Hammy" is nice, I don't think the pitch quality was really improved. So I'm probably going to definitely return the GP-180, and I need to A/B the Pocket Master and GP-50 more. I'm currently leaning the Pocket Master since it's more portable. I hope maybe they can eventually bring the extra delays and "Hammy" either as a software upgrade to the GP-50 or in a new, similarly sized "GP-80" or something. Whichever I go with, if they ever bring the new modeling into a GP-50 sized unit, that would be a must buy for me, since the upgrades seem nice but not worth the large sacrifice in portability.

I ran across the "FarQuaadratic Formula" meme a few days ago, but I didn't like that all the ones I found used the same picture of FarQuaad for a, b, and c. So I put together my own version of it (of course, I had to make it a function of "s" for Shrek instead of the traditional "x").