Blackstar Beam Solo update: A NAM on the device and the same NAM played on my phone via the beam acting as a USB interface sounds identical. Except the phone app is normalising the input and output level so for some of the captures it sounds way louder by default. Need to bost the levels in the Beam preset. (Note that this requires you to select input 3 as the input to the phone based modeller and you need to create a “silent” preset on the Beam or you get both sounds at the same time.) The reverbs in the beam solo are …. not awful but not great. Definitely algorithmic and not convolution IRs, and they sound a bit metallic. I can get lusher sounds on my phone if I plug in a USB cable. When using a NAM as the amp on the beam, you can only have noise gate effects before it. Which is ok but you can’t have a modelled drive into a captured amp, say. Nor can you stack one capture into another. Nor can you use your own IRs for the cabinet. You are basically limited to single “combo” amp + cab captures. Which isn’t a huge problem but limits the available captures. Still no clock noise or other artefacts. I still like the app UX. The hardware is pretty intuitive. I like that it’s only five presets loaded at any time. Simple is good. #GearSquad #guitar #NAM