Blackstar Beam Mini is Available Now

The wait is over. The Blackstar Beam Mini is officially on sale. It’s the first amp in the world that can natively load Neural Amp Modeler (NAM) tones directly, made possible by TONE3000.

Available now for $229 / £169 / €189, this mini amp gives you instant access to thousands of tones created by the TONE3000 community, all directly on the device.

A setup that once took a pedalboard, amp, cabinet, and microphones now fits in the palm of your hand.

Buy the Beam Mini for $229.99 / £169 / €189 →

What the TONE3000 Integration Means

When you plug into a Beam Mini, you are plugging into the world's largest library of NAM captures and impulse responses, created and shared by a global community of guitarists, bassists, engineers, and producers.

Through the Beam app, you can browse and load any TONE3000 full rig capture directly onto your Beam Mini, including gear like:

Vintage Fender cleans captured from a real 1965 Deluxe Reverb
Boutique high-gain rigs that would cost five figures in real life
Experimental signal chains that you just can't find anywhere else

The library grows every single day. Every time someone shares a new capture to TONE3000, it becomes available on your Beam Mini. Your amp gets better over time, without you doing anything at all.

Why "Native NAM" Matters

Neural Amp Modeler (NAM) is widely considered the most accurate amp modeling technology available– delivering tone and dynamic response so authentic that it's virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.

Other products convert NAM files into proprietary formats that sound worse and lock you into their ecosystem. The Beam Mini runs NAM natively, preserving incredible quality while letting you take your tones anywhere.

Until now, playing true NAM captures meant running them inside a plugin on a computer or a high-powered floor unit. The Beam Mini changes that. With native NAM support, you get:

Instant access without a computer. No DAW, no plugin, no laptop. Just your guitar and the Beam Mini.
The real feel of NAM. The dynamics, the responsiveness, the way the gain blooms when you dig in.
Open-source ecosystem. TONE3000 is built on open-source NAM, so the tones you load on your Beam Mini are the same tones you can use in your DAW, on your pedalboard, or in any other NAM-compatible product.

Rather than build a walled garden where Blackstar tones only work on Blackstar gear, we chose to partner with TONE3000 so you can take your tones anywhere. This empowers you to take the sound in your head anywhere.
— Alex Gee, Head of Product at Blackstar

Open Source at its Core

Neural Amp Modeler and TONE3000 are open source, so developers can support, build, and contribute today.

https://github.com/sdatkinson/neural-amp-modeler
https://github.com/tone-3000

NAM Architecture 2 Makes It All Possible

The Beam Mini is the first product in the world to ship with Architecture 2 (A2), the next generation of Neural Amp Modeler. A2 was developed by TONE3000 in partnership with Steve Atkinson, the original creator of NAM, and it represents a complete redesign of the underlying neural network architecture.

A2 was built to solve a specific problem. The original NAM architecture (now called A1) is incredibly accurate, but it was designed before anyone knew how widely NAM would be adopted. Running A1 captures on small embedded hardware like the Beam Mini was next to impossible. Now there's a solution.

Here is what A2 brings to the Beam Mini and the broader NAM universe:

Better accuracy. A2 improves how NAM represents dynamics, gain structure, frequency response, and transient detail.
Lower CPU requirements. A2 delivers better accuracy than A1 while using a fraction of the processing power, enabling NAM to run on processing-constrained devices like the Beam Mini.
A nano variant for embedded hardware. A2 ships in two flavors. A2-Full is the maximum-accuracy version designed for desktops and DAWs. A2-Nano is a lightweight version, optimized for embedded devices.

Without A2, this product would not exist.

You can read more about how we got A2 running on embedded hardware in our deep dive on running NAM on the Daisy Seed.

Beam Mini Supports Full Rig Captures

The Beam Mini supports loading one A2-Nano Full Rig capture at a time.

Full Rig captures on TONE3000 are complete signal chains in a single NAM file: amp, cabinet, microphone, and pedals. Unlike Amp Head captures, which model only the amplifier and require a separate impulse response for the cab, Full Rigs are ready to play out of the box.

Alongside the Full Rig, the Beam Mini runs:

Pre-FX gate before the NAM capture, keeping your input clean and tight.
Post-FX modulation, reverb, and delay after the capture

Even More Beam Mini Features

Beyond NAM support, the Beam Mini is one of the most thoughtfully designed mini amps on the market. Blackstar built it as a complete portable solution for practice, songwriting, and casual play.

More tones:

Twelve component-level electric guitar amp models (six Blackstar designs and six Ampton recreations of iconic amps)
Three bass amp models, two acoustic voices, and an acoustic simulator
CabRig IR-based speaker and mic simulation

Speaker system:

Two 60mm full-range drivers and two passive bass radiators
Super Wide Stereo technology delivering room-filling, expansive sound
Sealed, acoustically tuned cabinet engineered with a leading UK acoustics specialist

Control and connectivity:

Tactile SpeedDial and Light Beam Display for instant visual feedback
Studio-quality headset mic for recording vocals and guitar together
Hi-Fi Bluetooth audio that turns the Beam Mini into a portable speaker

Plus, the Beam Mini runs over 18 hours of battery life on a single charge.

Powered by the TONE3000 API

Everything you have just read is made possible by the TONE3000 API. Our developer platform connects hardware and software products directly to the constantly expanding universe of tones captured and shared by a global community of musicians. If you build hardware or software products, you can get started with the API here: https://tone3000.com/api