Tech Talk – Palmer Pocket Amp

This video shows the Palmer Palmer MI PEPAMP – Pocket Amp explained by Markus Torvinen (Palmer Engineer) and Robin Henlich (Palmer production manager).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULgCwIgM-6Q&feature=youtu.be

ROBIN: Very nice! Hi there, we’re here again with another video from Palmer. This is Markus, developer at Palmer, I’m Robin. We’re here to show you the Palmer Pocket Amp. This is a really cool neat device. What it does, it’s basically a DI box with a preamp section inside. And as the name suggests it’s a pocket amp so you can actually use it like you would use a normal amplifier but you don’t connect a speaker to it. You either connect your headphones, or you connect it to a mixer like you would connect a normal DI box. And that’s what makes this unit really cool: it’s an analog device, it’s none of this digital stuff you can buy on the market, it’s purely analog. And you can adjust a number of things. You’ve got your normal drive level, treble and bass, and all that stuff. You can also select the type of amp, you can go from Tweed to British to U.S. and select the mode, crunch, heavy, and so on and so forth, and you can select the mic position.It can work as a normal DI box but you can also activate the drive function, and then these knobs are activated. So let’s say, Markus, how about if you just play it in the bypass mode, in the DI mode, and then you can just go through a couple of the functions, and then we’ll see how cool this unit sounds.

MARKUS: Okay. So, I show first the bypass mode when it’s on the clean.

MARKUS: And the I change to the drive mode, and I still keep it clean.

MARKUS: And you can use this very nice for… just for example.

MARKUS: And then I turn the drive a bit louder.

MARKUS: And you get really nice dirt to your sound.

MARKUS: And then I go through different amp styles, for example the British style:

MARKUS: The different modes in British style:

MARKUS: And heavy style:

MARKUS: And different mic positions, this was the classic, and now we go to the center:

MARKUS: And the off-axis:

MARKUS: And then the U.S. Mode, heavy and off-axis:

MARKUS: This is the center mode:

MARKUS: And this is the classic mode:

MARKUS: And then crunch mode:

MARKUS: And the clean mode:

ROBIN: Basically, that sums up the whole world of sounds you can achieve with the Pocket Amp. We didn’t change much of the dials here so, as you can imagine, there’s a lot of in-between options you have here with the Pocket Amp. The really cool thing about this is it really fits into your bag. Well, it might fit into your pocket as well if you have a big one, but it’s still really small and compact. You can really use it as I hope you’ve heard over the wedge we’ve been playing. It really sounds pretty much like a solid amp, and you can really save lugging your amp around if you’re just going for some band practises, if you just wanna jam at home, whatever. It’s a really cool unit. Obviously it’s got a guitar input, it’s got a headphone output, it’s got an MP3 player input. It’s got an XLR output where you can go directly to your mixer, and it’s got a normal jack output where you can go to your amplifier and actually use this like a preamp. So the most common application is probably having this thing on your lap, guitar in, headphones in, MP3 player in, and off you go. And that brings us to one point, and that’s this little push button here. We deliberately didn’t take a big solid heavy duty footswitch because we think that this is a very common application actually, having this on your lap, and just being able to switch easily between the channels as opposed to having a big heavy duty switch when you really have to push down. Of course you can also misuse it as a footswitch. If you’re a bit careful that works. You shouldn’t stomp on it like crazy but in most cases you wouldn’t do that anyway. What are the other features? Did I mention the aluminium die-cast housing? If I didn’t, it’s there. The thing is robust, it’s built to last. It’s got a battery compartment here at the back, and of course, it’s also got a DC connector here if you wanna run it off mains. Well, I think that sort of sums it up, this Pocket Amp. It sells for less than 100 Euros, and that makes it really interesting for the amateur but as well for the professional who just wants to jam or wants to practice before a gig, or whatever. It’s just a really cool unit. You can use it as a preamp, use it at home for practising, or in studios if you want. Alright, so that sums this little small box up. Markus, you’ve got some final words to this little baby of yours?

MARKUS: Yeah! This is very robust, very…

ROBIN: Versatile?

MARKUS: Yeah, I wanted to say flexible, but it’s also versatile.

ROBIN: More or less the same…

MARKUS: But it’s made with love and hearts, and it fits to all your your needs, to every situation.

ROBIN: There you go. That’s the reason to go and check it out, and do check out our YouTube channel, we’ll be up with a lot more videos soon. Take care, see you then.

MARKUS: Bye bye!

ROBIN: Bye bye!

All information about the product can be found here:

http://www.palmer-germany.com/mi/en/PEPAMP-Pocket-Amp-PEPAMP.htm