Sonicake Pocket Master | The best $65 you can spend on guitar gear in 2025?! Review & Demo

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Today we’re looking at a super cheap ($65, anyone?!), super tiny all-in-one digital modeler that’s stacked with a bunch of tones and features, including being able to load NAM profiles and captures: it’s the Sonicake Pocket Master!

Sonicake Pocket Master:

Digital modelers are forever getting smaller, cheaper, and more feature-rich. The Pocket Master – and yes, it will fit in your pocket, if you have big pockets! – is another level for me, though.

At $65, it’s going to be an option whatever your budget is. And it’s chock full of sounds too: you get 20 amps (including models of famous Fender, Marshall, Vox, MESA Boogie, Soldano and other rigs) and a bunch of IRs as cabinets to play with. You can even load your own IRs! You also get over 100 FX (stereo where relevant) that you can place in your chain, from recreations of iconic overdrives, distortions and fuzzes, to compressors, reverbs, delays, modulations, and more.

On top of that, the Pocket Master has a built-in tuner, drum machine/metronome and looper. You can play it silently with headphones, use it as your audio interface for recording, or stick it somewhere else in your signal chain or on your pedalboard.

It’s battery powered (although of course you can plug it in too), and you can also connect it via Bluetooth to a free App for Apple/Android/Mac/PC to manage your sounds and control everything more easily. You can also do everything via the unit itself, but the Pocket Master’s size means it only has a couple of buttons, so the App gives you more of an overview when you’re dialing in tones.

So, that’s a LOT of stuff for $65! The key question is, then: how good is it really? Does the Pocket Master sound and feel like a $65 cheap unit? Or does it excel as a Portable Multi Effects Processor? And what kind of guitar player is it for, anyway? I’ve heard quite a few people saying this is the best $65 you can spend on guitar gear in 2025, so I’m keen to put that to the test here.

In the video, I go through my favorite 10 sounds/presets I’ve made with the Pocket Master so far, from pristine cleans and lower gain drive tones to heavier rock and metal sounds and some more ambient and atmospheric tones. My guitar for today is the stunning 2025 Ibanez AZ Standard HSS for all my single coil and humbucking needs in one!

Let me know what you think of the Pocket Master in the comments!

Here are some links to the various playing samples and info bits:

00:00 Hello!
00:15 Intro to the Sonicake Pocket Master
02:16 Today’s rig and plan

02:40 Tone 1: Classic rock (AC/DC, Airbourne, etc.)
03:10 Dialing in tones with the Pocket Master App
04:34 Classic rock tones
06:17 Tone 2: Americana (Jason Isbell, Ariel Posen, Fratellis, etc.)
08:29 Tone 3: Hard rock (EVH, NWOBHM, etc.)
10:43 Tone 4: Pristine clean tones (Country, Blues, Folk, etc.)
12:43 Tone 5: Indie/Alternative Rock
14:55 Tone 6: Metal
17:14 Tone 7: Fuzzy Garage Rock (White Stripes, Smashing Pumpkins, etc.)
19:31 Tone 8: Clean Garage Rock (Black Keys, etc.)
21:58 Tone 9: Punk Rock (Green Day, Blink-182, etc.)
23:51 Tone 10: Post Rock/Ambient (Explosions In The Sky, Mogwai, etc.)
25:56 Tone 11: “Sam Fender” Clean (duh 😉)

28:16 My thoughts
29:23 No more option paralysis and building tones
30:37 My top tip on preset building with the Pocket Master
31:04 Who is the Pocket Master intended for? Is it right for you?
31:50 And the bad stuff?
32:28 Final thoughts and goodbye

Check pout Shane @intheblues great detailed video of everything the Pocket Master can do here:

My setup was as follows: I ran the Pocket Master via a TRS cable into two inputs of my Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 audio interface (for the stereo effects!), which went into Logic Pro X. That’s it. No post-processing on the sounds was done. Here’s some links to those bits of gear:

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At Thomann:
At Sweetwater:
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Backing music from the YouTube Audio Library: Duck In The Alley – TrackTribe.

#Sonicake #SonicakePocketMaster #PocketMaster #SonicakePedals #MultiEffects #MultiFX

*Note: certain links in the description are affiliate links. If you click said links and purchase anything as a result, I will receive a small commission. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, but it does help to support the channel. So, if you do that, thank you very much!*

@SONICAKE