The Soran Tiny Stomp – The Budget Modeller That Finally Fixed That Problem
If you follow the channel, you might have noticed something slightly unusual last week. Within the space of a few days we dropped three full videos and a stack of shorts all covering the Tiny Stomp from Soran Audio.
That wasn’t an accident.
I was excited. Properly excited.
This little box feels like a genuine step forward for the mini amp modeller / multi-FX world, especially at the super budget end of the market.
To explain why, we need to rewind about a year.
When NAM Went Portable
Around this time last year we covered the Sonicake Pocket Master, and that thing landed with a bit of a bang. The big deal at the time was that it brought NAM profiling to a portable unit.
Now NAM (Neural Amp Modeler) itself wasn’t new. It had already been around for a couple of years as a DAW-based tool, letting people capture and share amp profiles in a free open-source platform. The problem was that you pretty much needed to be sat at a computer to use it.
The Pocket Master changed that. Suddenly you could take NAM profiles out of the studio and onto a pedalboard.
Naturally, the floodgates opened.
We saw companies like Valeton jump in with things like the GP-5, and Sonicake themselves started rolling the tech across the Matribox range. Since then we’ve had more refined units aimed squarely at players who actually want to take these things out gigging.
But there’s been one persistent little annoyance.
The One Thing Everyone Wanted
Most of these budget NAM-capable units share the same limitation:
You can’t run NAM profiles and cab sims at the same time.
Whilst that might not be like a massive deal breaker, in practice it restricts what profiles you can use.
NAM captures can represent different stages of an amp signal:
Just the preamp
Preamp and power amp
The full amp and cab together
Because these portable units couldn’t run cab sims alongside NAM, you were basically forced to use full-rig captures that already included the cabinet sound.
And to be fair, that’s workable. There are loads of great full rig captures floating around for free.
But it does limit your choices.
In the back of everyone’s mind there was always the same thought:
“Wouldn’t it be great if we could just run NAM and IRs together?”
Well… Now You Can
And that’s exactly what the Tiny Stomp does.
You can:
Import NAM captures
Import your own IR files
Run them together at the same time
That means you can pair a pure amp capture with whatever cab IR you fancy. Or run NAM with the built-in cab sims, which are actually surprisingly good (and in-depth too).
You can even skip NAM entirely and run the built-in amp models with IRs if that suits the tone you’re chasing.
In other words, it finally delivers the flexibility people have been asking for since NAM first landed in portable units.
But Soran weren't content in just adding one bit of versatility, they said "hold my beer...."
A Signal Chain That Actually Makes Sense
Another thing that often crops up in these smaller modellers is static signal chains.
You get an amp block, a cab block, a couple of effects blocks… and most of them are locked in place. You might be able to shuffle a few things around, but generally the layout is fixed.
Soran clearly looked at that and thought:
“Why?”
On the Tiny Stomp you can move any block anywhere in the chain.
Seriously. Anywhere.
During one of the videos I even moved the cab block before the amp, which obviously makes absolutely no sense in the real world… but the point is it lets you do it.
Is it always useful? No.
Is it great for experimentation and creativity? Absolutely.
It’s Not a Helix (But It’s Not Trying to Be)
Now, to keep things realistic, this isn’t a full-blown modular playground like a Line 6 Helix or even something like the Sonicake Matribox II Pro.
Those units let you pile on multiple instances of effects until the processor gives up. Want eight phasers in your signal chain? Go wild.
The Tiny Stomp isn’t quite that level of flexible.
But here’s the thing.
It’s a sub-£100 modelling unit.
At that price point, the fact that it offers:
NAM support
IR loading
NAM + IR simultaneously
Fully movable signal blocks
is genuinely impressive.
Why We Made Three Videos About It
So yeah… when you put it all together, you can probably see why I got a bit carried away and ended up making three videos about this thing in one week.
The Tiny Stomp isn’t trying to compete with the big boys. What it’s doing instead is raising the bar for ultra-budget modellers.
If you want something with more footswitches and deeper gigging functionality, the Matribox II Pro is still probably the most versatile budget modeller out there.
But if you’re looking for maximum tonal flexibility for the smallest amount of money, the Tiny Stomp is pushing the category forward in a really interesting way.
/watch this space, Soran just moved the needle with this one.
