Blackstar Beam Mini

me all excited for a second hoping it was this beam

1769113939384.png
 
Nice to see NAM gaining some good traction. First time I tried NAM with some good cranked plexi profiles by slamming mofo was quite the eye opener for me.
 
AlbertA said:
@2dor Archon classic captures literally sent me down the path of acquiring the physical amp, they where that good to me.
Click to expand...
That's one amp I really liked a lot in 2025 - like it a lot more than some of the heavy hitters I tried like the SLO100 or the VH4. It just sits right & has a satisfying punch to it.
 
It's an interesting concept. I guess this is designed for full rig NAM captures. Also, I have read that these are full-quality NAM captures. I wonder how long it will be before someone puts out a Tone X one competitor at a good price, using full-quality NAM captures.
 
Blix said:
Nice to see NAM gaining some good traction.
Click to expand...

Defenitely. I think it's the way to go for anyone not willing to buy any of the high end modelers.

And no, unlike some others, I don't think it's all *that* much of a rabbit hole in case you show some discipline and even more so in case the NAM loading unit/block is laid out well. Something like the NAM loading block in Two Notes' Genome will get you a *lot* of mileage from just a single capture.

And yes, I'm pretty much kind of a convert. I always thought I'd only want to deal with component modeling to get the most out of whatever single amps, but after re-organizing my live setups so they're using Tonex Ones (hence basically the same as NAM) now, I know I just don't really need it. And the sound quality is just outstanding. Even my lowly GP-50, adding whatever weird conversion on top of the NAM capture, is delivering incredibly nice sounds.
 
Why do they make it a mini? Why don’t they make it a bigger size so it sounds better and can compete with like the THR
 
Read some rumors about the new ID:X floor modellers getting NAM support soon, too.

Guess it makes sense. The Beam is basically a ID:X with a portable speaker attached to it.
 
dronerstone said:
So, all the competitors went out of their way to let Blackstar have this first?

Something's off...
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's pretty weird. I expected quite some more companies to hop onto the NAM train a while ago already, but so far there's really not much.
Hoping for a single capture (plus MIDI patch selection) pedal to come (with better controls than the Sonulab one).
 
ragingplatypi said:
Maybe that’s why the ad copy for the Beam says springtime release. Maybe they’re skirting around an embargo date by just getting the marketing out early.
Click to expand...
I think that's mostly related to the new A2 NAM architecture that's rolling out soon; the Mini seems to leverage the slimmable tech with the A2 architecture to run NAM profiles.

www.neuralampmodeler.com

Architecture "A2"

Blog posts about A2: • NeuralAmpModelerCore v0.4.0.rc2 is released (2026-01-21) • NeuralAmpModelerCore documentation and demo integrations are live (2026-01-21) • Test Models are available (2026-01-29)In quarter 1 of 2026, I plan to develop and release a new default architecture for snapshot NAM...
www.neuralampmodeler.com www.neuralampmodeler.com
 
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