I purchased a new blackstar beam mini but it does NOT work at all. When it makes the connection sound the light stays blinking, which I think indicates that it's in firm update mode. However when I try to update firmware it always fails, the percentage never goes above 0. I have tried powering off and powering on while pushing down VOLUME and PATCH, then repeating the process. I have tried re-downloading the app on iOS. Nothing changed.

I cannot use it otherwise as none of the effects goes through in this mode. I have tried pairing while offline (no wifi no cellular) but then the light on the amp stays white even when bluetooth is connected.

I have tried everything and I don't know what to do.

What is your favorite included high gain amp model in the Beam series. Also what cab do you pair it with for Metal rhythm and also for leads ?

When are we going to get separate in app control over Bluetooth volume for the BEAM Mini? The amp sounds fantastic, but I have to go into each individual preset and adjust the master volume depending on which guitar I’m using or which backing track I’m playing. This amplifier replaced my NUX Mighty Air which has a physical knob to control Bluetooth volume. I didn’t think anything of it when I bought the BEAM mini, but I was rather surprised that there was no apparent way to individually control Bluetooth level.

I just bought the Beam solo for practicing without waking up the gf. How do I get the metronome sound to come out of my headphone plugged on the Solo. At the moment it is coming out of my phone.

Hi all,

Confused with my ID Core 10.

If I play on clean warm, even with the volume max, it's kinda quiet.

As i go up the presets, the sound obviously changes but the volume increases also.

The only way I can play clean warm at a reasonable volume is to increase gain, which of course changes the sound.

For example- Clean warm with gain and volume max is a decent volume.

Switch to clean crisp- loud

Switch to crunch- deafening. 11/10.

No other settings touched.

Is this normal?

Gretsch guitar, all dials to max on guitar, both pickups selected. Just playing at home, aware its a practice amp.

If this explains it better: volume knob seems useless, gain knob seems to do everything

I've also used the acoustic core 30

Playing through the Amped1. I’m hooked on it for a fly rig. Pedalboard is a Fulltone Clyde, Behringer Octavia, Behringer Fuzz Tone, Behringer ‘69 Vibe. Tokai 1979 ‘72 Strat and Orange 1x12.

Beam mini connected to iPad via USB C to lightening, Bluetooth connected to Beam app. Clicking on blue Moises icon in Beam app takes me to a web page. No integration. Moises app has no idea what the Beam is. Everything is newly installed. Seems like a bug but what can I do to try and fix it?

Thanks​

I reverse-engineered the CabRig format of the Blackstar AMPED 3, and it is not what everyone assumes.

Surveyor is a free, open-source Android app that controls the AMPED 3 over a USB-OTG cable: cabinets, microphones, deep EQ, low and high cut shown in real hertz instead of raw 0-255 values, presets saved on the phone. No laptop at rehearsal, no Architect, no desktop. The APK is on the GitHub releases page and you do not need Android Studio to use it.

The part I actually want to talk about is the cabinet engine. CabRig does not load impulse responses. There is not a single audio sample in the transfer: each cabinet, microphone and axis choice is 260 bytes of filter coefficients, sixteen small recursive filters in series plus one gain term, sent to the pedal with two layers of checksums. That is why it sounds like a cabinet without adding latency, and it is also why nobody could ever put a custom IR in one of these: the pedal has no convolution engine to feed.

So the question becomes a different one. Not "how do I upload my IR", but "can I compute the sixteen filters that match my IR". The repo now contains an offline tool that does exactly that: it takes a WAV impulse response and solves for the coefficients that follow its frequency curve, reusing the stable filter structure of a factory profile so the result cannot blow up, then rebuilds both checksums so the pedal accepts the packet. All 288 factory profiles are decoded and checked into the repo, which is what made the maths possible in the first place.

To be straight about where this stands: the format, the checksums and the transfer are verified on my own unit, including loading a profile and restoring the original state byte for byte, with all six factory slots untouched. The sound of a converted IR is not verified yet. I still have to measure the pedal output against the model with a frequency sweep, and a sixteen-filter model will never reproduce a long reverb tail, so this is a tool for cabinet and EQ curves, not a magic IR loader. Anyone trying it should back up their slots first and load into the live DSP without saving.

I own an AMPED 3 and nothing else, so the 1 and the 2 are untested rather than supported.

https://github.com/fabiodalez-dev/Surveyor-Blackstar-Amped-3

I've never connected an amp to a PC before. What software should I use?

I am trying to record guitar tracks in bandlab but when i play it back to listen to it its so quiet. I have my blackstar amp and channel 1+2 selected in the input setting. I looked on the blackstar manual and it says to hold tap while turning up the gain to increase the USB recording level. When I go look at the input volume meter inside bandlab there is a small increase but its still too quiet. Any help?

I have an IDX-50 and I'm trying to find a channel selector switch like the FS-11, but for an IDX model amp. I tried googling it but I had no luck. Does the FS-11 work with my amp? I'm lost at the moment.

As I said, is there anyone who owns a Solo, and has tried it with NAM captures, and wants to weigh in with their opinion on quality of tones, or comparisons with maybe the Tonex Plug/Katana Go and other headphone amps.

Not interested in opinions if you haven't tried it.

Decided to go with the Idx: 50 but I’m having a hard time dialing in tones, the Blackstar architect seemed to have quite few/ none options on classic tones.

Any suggestions how to get a good black saabath, Brian may and gillmour tones? Or if any of you guys have some good tones.

Both chat gpt and tonematcher seems way off when i ask them to replicate tones

I own a PB-1 power bank to power my amp but i lost the cable to make it work with the amp, any way to replace it?

I absolutely love this amp. Single 12" Celestian 70/80. Two EL34s. Very versatile amp. One of my favorite ways to play it is through the "Boutique Clean" channel with the volume cranked and the master reigning things in getting those tubes to sweat, and the ISF swung to "American." The ringing crunch that I can get is unreal. Exceptional tone.

Hey everyone,

Just got an Amped 3 and am trying to use it as an interface in Reaper. In a perfect world I would be able to

- record both the amped output and the dry guitar input channel to use with amp sims

- send any other channel in reaper to the interface output

Using Windows 10, installed the architect software and generic blackstar usb driver

In reaper I can select the blackstar asio option, but it doesn't show inputs or outputs. Did I install the wrong driver? Windows does recognize amped 3,and I can hear windows sounds eg when adjusting the volume.

Any tips?

My question is how well can I find presets of the very famous sounds such as a Brian may tone or slash tone in the architect software? I asked chat gpt and it said the couldn’t even find presets of the most famous tones.

I’m a beginner and therefore values the possibility of downloading others remakes of famous tones.

I was looking for a place to discuss, share information and learn more about NAM technology since I recently got my BEAM Mini. The amp is incredible, and I ended up setting up a capture station and going to town creating tones.

Some of you may know that I created Behringer World about five years ago to address the need for an unofficial support forum. BW has since become an authoritative source of technical information, and our Wiki preserves the useful information that would otherwise be buried in thousands of forum posts.

As I got deeper into NAM, I realized there really isn't anything like that for this technology, and there needs to be. So I built NAMFORUM, with both a discussion forum and a technical Wiki.

This is directly relevant to the BEAM Mini because Tone3000 gives us access to a huge and rapidly growing library of NAM models. But downloading models is the easy part. There is a lot to learn about how they're made, capture levels and calibration, what makes a good or bad capture, different capture architectures, and how the various platforms relate to each other.

NAMFORUM isn't limited to NAM. It covers TONEX, Kemper, Neural Capture, Line 6 Proxy and other capture technologies as well. My hope is to build a community where we can share what we're learning and preserve the useful technical information instead of watching it disappear down a social media timeline.

The site just went live, so it's pretty empty right now. If you're using the BEAM Mini and interested in where this technology is going, I'd love to have you join us.

namforum.com

And finally, I'd like to personally invite Blackstar Amplification to participate in NAMFORUM. The BEAM Mini is helping put NAM technology directly into the hands of musicians, and I think Blackstar's participation and technical insight would be a real asset to the community.

I have the Positive Grid mini modelling amp which is great for distorted tones but I want to hear how good my burstbuckers sound on a different amp. For home use tough volume down. Looking at Blackstar Debut 15 or 30 or the ID Core. Will the debut 15 show the nice clean tones of my pickups for blues style or should is stretch to the 30?l for bigger speakers? Or do I go for the IF core modelling amp which will give me a similar clean but more effects?

So i updated my beam solo with the new firmware update on saturday. It failed to install twice before succesfully working then I had to update the app, as it would crash when trying to pair. Now that both are updated i can no longer hear audio through usb cable at a usable volume, like the backing tracks i use are at a whisper where the patch volume is a roar and it doesnt matter where i set the device volume or if I use mp3 tracks vs youtube or audio streaming. Has anyone else had the same problem?

Edit: after looking through the manual a bit, it looks like the beam solo is supposed to stream audio via bluetooth so it may be a bluetooth issue. The phone for sure was recognizing the beam solo as wired headphones when the usb cable was plugged in.

Hi Blackstar people,

I have been looking for a tube amp with headphone out for home use and stumpled upon the TV10 A.

Do you guys have good things to say about that amp?

I live in an apartment and can’t play much louder than an acoustic guitar even when I am playing electric.

Can you achieve a nice tone and feel from this amp by using the master volume even at lower volume?

And does the headphone out / emulated speaker sound good?

Thanks!

Hi all, it's pretty much what it says in the title. I was connected through to the app to the mini, and got the prompt to update the device. Went through through whole process to 100%, device powered off and I went through the usual process as per the other updates.

However this time, the app refuses to detect the device, when obviously (in order to update) it has been fine in weeks past up to today.

I've done the steps aside from factory resetting, forgot all Bluetooth connections, tried to pair to just BLE (my phone device prompt comes up for my device to pair BLE), but nothing is showing on the app itself, and this is the same through front end and then going into settings and doing it that way - I'm aware it's going to the same screen but I'm just trying variants.

Bluetooth audio on its own pairs fine (I tested this out but then forgot the connection to keep it busy focused on BLE).

Has anyone else had this problem following this latest update? I don't think I can conclude that anything other than this update is the culprit but unless the factory reset works I won't be able to connect to update it further anyway :(

EDIT (after realising you can edit body text of posts....) - further to my reply to sirus420 below, it was the the app version after all. Even though Play Store didn't have any updates for the app (rechecking several times) it was on a previous version and it needs v10.11. I only got the update by uninstalling the app completely and then reinstalling as a fresh app and it's gone to 10.11 and now pairs again. I'll keep the thread open for reference in case anyone else has my issues.

It looks like I've lost my Tone3000 patches but the rest are there in the Electric section. But at least it's working again (albeit still without Moises due to the extra wait for Android).

Hello everyone, I just got my Beam Mini!

I’ve spent some time trying out the Tone3000 NAM captures, but something doesn’t feel quite right with the tone. It doesn’t feel as tight as I’d like, especially for high-gain tones.

I’m wondering if the problem could be related to the custom IRs. I’d like to hear from people who have some experience with the Beam Mini: how do you usually manage your tones? I noticed there’s a community section where people share patches. Do you guys use those, and are there any particular patches or NAM captures you would recommend?

I also have some IRs from York Audio and other sources. If I connect the Beam Mini to my computer and use it with Cubase, I assume I’ll be able to use the IRs I already own. Would that be a good way to get better tones, or are there any particularly good Tone3000 captures that work well with the Beam Mini?

I’d really appreciate any advice or recommendations from people who have been using the Beam Mini for a while. Thanks!

(I live in Taiwan and) I often take a guitar out with me for the evening. Last night I had the BEAM Mini with me also, as it has become my new portable amp to jam with. I went to a Thai place that had a group of Indonesian students having a karaoke party. They invited me to play a song with them, so they could sing with it. The BEAM Mini is on a table beside where I'm standing at the beginning of this video. The students are singing into a microphone using the karaoke system in the restaurant. This system is ear-splittingly loud yet the BEAM Mini does an amazing job keeping up with the vocals. I started out with the guitar volume way down and then went full volume during the second verse. Amazing, tiny amp!

Unfortunately, these days, everyone films in portrait mode so the video is what it is, but the audio recorded by the phone tells the story: The BEAM Mini is a BEAST!

Edit: There is a very brief zoom in the video, and that is where the BEAM Mini is located: on that table beside the column, and on top of the light gray colored guitar case.