The only problem I see with the transition is that the very beginning is a bit warmer-sounding than the replacement track, which pretty much the only thing that gives it away.
Yes, I hear this as well. I can fix that easily, probably using an earlier recording as you suggested. To be honest, I didn't spend much time on this- I was just listening to the Gerhardt album and thinking how similar the two tracks were. Then, I synched it up to the video, changed the key of the opening fanfare to make it work, and it worked really well (I thought).
In fact, I'm kind of embarassed to say that a lot of the best parts of this movie were happy accidents, or crazy "What if..." ideas that actually really improved the thing...
EDIT:
P.S. - You do realize that this change alone is going to DEMAND a Trooperman Prequel Trilogy now.... Right?
Well, at bare minimum I need to dub Anakin for ROTS, the new main titles must be inserted into ROTS and Ep. I, Weezer and/or THX have to come back and dub the stormtroopers, Sluggo and Company must return to record Nemodians and Jar-Jar.
For Episode I, I was really hoping someone else would tackle that- I really don't have a whole lot of time to "play around" with Star Wars after SOTDS.
Episode III- I'm really distressed about. Fundamentally, I'm not seeing a way to turn it into a good movie. With Episode II, largely with the help of Mark Haslett, we were able to twist the basic story into something that's good and coherent and redefine Anakin. With Episode III, what can you do? Yoda and Sidious have a lightsaber fight that ends for no reason at all. ??? Palpatine has ridiculous looking makeup after zapping himself with his lightning (rather than a slow Dark Side corruption as was being strongly implied in Episode II). ??? Then there's the whole General Grievous problem. Is he Darth Maul? Does that stretch the limits of believability? I guess it's no worse than finding out that 3 out of the 4 main characters from completely different backgrounds are all in the same immediate family in ROTJ...
Maybe this is material for a new thread...