Deep Dive with the Soran Tiny Stomp – More Than Just a Budget Modeller

After dropping the initial video on the Tiny Stomp, it felt only right to spend a bit more time with it. Not just a quick demo, but a proper sit-down, poke-around, “what actually is this thing capable of?” kind of session. 

Safe to say… there’s a lot going on under the hood.

First Impressions – it is more than just a nam player than can do cab sims at the same time.

The beauty of something like the Tiny Stomp is that it invites you to just explore. You can find yourself dialling in tones you wouldn't usually lean towards because that effect is there. One thing that was asked about time and time again in the comments was the looper. On the recent live stream, I had the tiny stomp on the floor and could activate the looper with my foot. For those wondering if the buttons are substantial enough, I did a few loops on the live stream and it worked perfectly well. I probably wouldn't trust it putting full weight on it, but whilst sitting down then you certainly can. We added some of the built in drums into the mix too and, surprisingly, they stood up really well. Not studio quality, by any stretch, but not soulless 90s midi drums either. It is definitely a win for me. 

Delay Section – Simple, But Covers Ground

Working through the delay options, you’ve got your usual suspects:

Digital (bright and cutting)

Modulated (a bit of that MXR Carbon Copy-style movement)

Tape (warmer, softer repeats)

Reverse (because chaos is sometimes necessary)

None of them are reinventing the wheel, but they all do a decent job. The modulated and tape delays in particular add a bit of character, especially when you start stacking them with gain.

Amp & Cab Pairing – Where It Gets Interesting

Switching over to a JCM800-style model, paired with a V30-loaded 4x12 cab, things start to feel very familiar—in a good way.

Where this unit actually punches above its weight is in the cab and mic options. You’re not just stuck with a static cab sound; you can tweak mic types and placement:

MD421 for a balanced punch

E906 for that upper mid bite

SM57 (because of course… it’s the benchmark)

It’s these little touches that make it feel less like a toy and more like a genuinely usable bit of kit.

Modulation – A Pleasant Surprise

Cheaper multi-FX units can be a bit hit-or-miss when it comes to modulation—but the Tiny Stomp actually holds its own. There’s a particular vibe-style effect in there that nails that slightly uneven, lopsided wobble you’d expect from vintage units.

It doesn’t feel overly clinical or perfectly symmetrical—it’s got a bit of character to it, which is exactly what you want.

The Weird Stuff – Hit and Miss (As Expected)

The pitch shifter, for example, is… fine for single notes. Start throwing chords at it and it begins to struggle a bit. That’s not exactly a shock at this price point. Remember, this thing comes in at less money than a stand alone pitch shifter tends to cost, it is all relative.

On the flip side, the fuzz models are actually better than expected. A lot of budget units tend to not really get the character of fuzz, with it being more of a bass-heavy distortion more than anything. Now, I'm not saying this is a perfect recreation of a vintage Fuzz Face, but absolutely usable in a pinch.

 Why This Thing Is So Fun

The Soran Tiny Stomp isn’t about perfection—it’s about possibility. It’s a compact, affordable unit that lets you:

Experiment with different amp and cab combinations

Explore effects without needing a full pedalboard

Get genuinely usable tones with minimal fuss

More importantly, it makes you want to play. You start off testing features and end up just jamming—which is always a good sign.

It might not replace your full rig, but as a grab-and-go creative tool, home practice and demo recording just stepped up the game. 

Revisiting the Boss OS-2 OverDrive/Distortion – Underrated or Underwhelming?

Today we’re giving the old OS-2 another crack at the whip. It’s long been labelled the runt of the Boss drive litter—but is that actually fair? Or has it just been misunderstood all these years?

On paper, this thing should be a bit of a winner. You’ve got two circuits in one box: an overdrive and a distortion, with the ability to blend between the two using the Colour control. That’s a pretty forward-thinking idea, especially considering when this pedal first dropped.

 The Overdrive Side – Perfectly Fine… Just Not Special

Let’s start with the overdrive side. If you’re familiar with classics like the Boss OD-3 OverDrive, Boss BD-2 Blues Driver or even the humble Boss SD-1 Super OverDrive, you’ll know Boss can absolutely nail this kind of circuit.

The OS-2… doesn’t quite reach those heights.

It’s not bad by any stretch. You can get some nice **low-gain grit and boost-style tones**, especially with the gain kept in check. In fact, it behaves best in that lower-to-mid gain range. Push it too far though, and things start to feel a bit noisy and a touch unrefined—particularly by modern standards.

There’s also that classic older Boss quirk: **the tone control sweet spot**. Sit in the wrong part of the sweep and things can get a bit fizzy or a bit dull. Find the middle ground, though, and it behaves itself nicely enough.

The USP – Blending OD and Distortion

Now, this is where things get interesting.

The OS-2 isn’t really about the individual circuits—it’s about how they interact. Boss clearly had a vision here, and you can see that Boss clearly saw potential in this idea with later pedals like the Boss JB-2 Angry Driver.

Set the Colour control right in the middle, and something quite cool happens. You get this tight, crunchy definition from the overdrive side, with a softer, mushier distortion layered underneath. It’s arguably the best sound in the pedal—the actual sweet spot where everything clicks.

The frustrating bit? It feels like the individual building blocks aren’t quite polished enough to fully realise that idea. It’s like a great concept that just needed a bit more refinement.

Pushing an Amp – Does It Redeem Itself?

You’d think a pedal like this might come alive when used as a boost into a driven amp—and to be fair, it does a decent job.

But again, it’s a crowded field. There are plenty of pedals that do this better, cleaner, and with more character. The OS-2 holds its own, but it doesn’t exactly stand out.

So… Is It Actually Any Good?

Here’s the honest take:

It’s not as bad as people say… but it’s also not exactly a hidden gem.

It lands somewhere in the middle as a perfectly usable, slightly unrefined drive pedal with an interesting core idea. There are players out there who absolutely swear by it—and for certain setups, I can believe it works brilliantly. But it often feels like they’re getting great tones in spite of the pedal rather than directly from it.

Final Thoughts

If you can grab a Boss OS-2 OverDrive/Distortion cheap on the used market, it’s definitely worth a punt. There’s enough in there to have a bit of fun with, especially if you lean into that blended sweet spot.

At full price though? Absolutely not.

You could easily look towards something like the Joyo King of Kings for less money. Ok, it doesn't do exactly what this does but you can get overdrive out of it, you can get distortion out of it and, more importantly, it sounds great in most settings.

The OS-2 isn’t a disaster. It’s just… a bit average. And in a world full of incredible drive pedals, “average” is sometimes the hardest thing to justify.

An exciting update in the world of NAM profiling...

 NAM Architecture 2 – A Big Step Forward for Amp Profiling?

Something pretty exciting has been happening in the world of Neural Amp Modelling, and I wanted to take a bit of time to talk through it properly. There’s a new update on the horizon called Architecture 2 (A2), and while it might sound like a fairly dry technical upgrade on the surface, the implications for guitar players could actually be huge.

Before we dive into what A2 actually is, it’s worth taking a quick step back and looking at where NAM came from in the first place.

A Quick Refresher: What is NAM?

Neural Amp Modelling (NAM) first started appearing around 2019 as a project under development. The idea behind it was fairly simple: create a system that could capture the sound of a real amplifier and turn it into a digital profile.

That concept itself wasn’t new. Companies like Kemper had already been doing it for years with things like the Profiler, and more recently the Quad Cortex had joined the party with its own capture technology.

The catch with those systems is that they’re tied to their own hardware. If you make a Kemper profile, you need a Kemper to use it. If you move to another platform later, those captures don’t necessarily follow you.

NAM approached the problem from the opposite direction.

It was built as an open-source platform, meaning the technology was free, the captures were shareable, and nobody was locked behind a hardware paywall. In theory, it made amp profiling far more accessible to everyday players.

The Early Limitation: Computers Only

The first practical NAM setups started appearing around 2022, but there was one big limitation.

You needed a computer.

NAM ran inside a DAW as a plugin, so it was brilliant for recording, but if you wanted to use it live you were essentially bringing a laptop rig with you. For some players that was fine, but it wasn’t exactly the most convenient setup.

The real shift came around 2024–2025, when companies started figuring out how to make NAM portable.

When NAM Hit the Pedalboard

That’s where units like the Valeton GP‑5 and the Sonicake Pocket Master came into the picture.

These little boxes suddenly made it possible to run NAM-style tones on a pedalboard-sized device. Instead of needing a laptop, you could throw one of these units in your gig bag and have access to amp captures wherever you wanted.

More recently we’ve also seen things like the Soran Tiny Stomp pushing that idea even further.

However, there was always a small compromise hiding behind the scenes.

The “NAM-ish” Workaround

Full NAM profiles are extremely CPU intensive. Running them at full quality requires quite a bit of processing power, which smaller and more affordable hardware simply doesn’t have.

So companies found a clever workaround.

When you import a NAM profile into devices like the GP-5 or the Pocket Master, the unit converts the file into a lighter internal format that the hardware can actually run.

The result is something that sounds incredibly good — more than good enough for most uses — but technically it’s not running the full-fat NAM profile that you would get inside a computer.

You’ll often see comments online from people pointing out that the bit-rate or fidelity isn’t identical to the DAW version. They’re technically right… but at the same time the tones coming out of these little units are already seriously impressive.

For a lot of players, it’s been the perfect introduction to NAM without needing to wrestle with a full computer setup.

Still, there has always been a lingering question in the background:

What if we could run full NAM profiles on smaller hardware?

Enter Architecture 2 (A2)

That’s where the new update comes in.

The NAM developers have been working on something called Architecture 2, often shortened to A2.

In their own words, A2 is designed to be “lighter, better, and slimmer.”

The big goal here is to reduce the processing demands of NAM without sacrificing the quality that made it so exciting in the first place.

If that works the way people hope it will, it could mean something pretty significant:

Full-quality NAM captures running on smaller, more affordable hardware.

In other words, the gap between studio NAM and portable NAM could start disappearing.

When Might We See It?

The early timeline mentioned March 2026, which is right about now. As of writing, the rollout hasn’t quite landed yet, so we may be running a little behind schedule.

That’s not unusual with projects like this.

Realistically, it wouldn’t be surprising if we start seeing A2-powered hardware sometime later in 2026, perhaps around the third or fourth quarter once manufacturers have had time to integrate the new system.

And if that happens, things could get very interesting very quickly.

Why This Could Be a Big Deal

If A2 delivers on its promise, we could potentially see:

Higher fidelity NAM captures on compact hardware

Less reliance on file conversion workarounds

Even more flexibility when combining amp captures with IR cabinet simulations

That would be a huge step forward for the entire ecosystem of budget modellers and portable profiling units.

For players who have been enjoying the convenience of things like the GP-5, Pocket Master, and Tiny Stomp, the next generation could offer the same portability but with even closer-to-the-real-thing tones.

The Bottom Line

Neural Amp Modelling has already come a long way in a fairly short space of time. What started as a computer-only experiment has quickly grown into a platform that’s appearing in pedalboard-sized gear that anyone can afford.

Architecture 2 looks like the next big step in that evolution.

If it works the way the developers hope, we could be heading towards a world where studio-quality amp captures fit inside tiny, affordable hardware units.

And honestly?

That’s a pretty exciting place for guitar gear to be heading.