Blackstar shipped the first amp to load NAM captures natively on May 5, 2026, three months before HeadRush's firmware landed. So HeadRush was not early. It was not close to early.
What changed in August was not native playback. Roughly a dozen products already had that. It was what sits between the online library and the pedal on your floor.
That gap matters more than the feature checkbox. Only one lineup currently offers on-board access to the whole TONE3000 catalog with nothing else paired, plugged in, or switched on.
It works, and it works well enough that nobody should sneer at it. The GP-5 holds up to 80 converted captures and 20 IRs, which is a lot of tones for the money. But everything runs at 44.1 kHz, your firmware and editor versions have to match exactly, and the file you end up with is no longer a NAM file.
Hotone's Ampero II series converts over USB too. So does the Sonicake Pocket Master, which costs around 65 dollars and runs its converted captures at 48 kHz. The NUX Amp Academy Stomp does not really load them at all, routing NAM through USB audio and the effects loop instead.
Pedals that convert NAM files into a proprietary format are not lying to anyone. They just add a step, a computer, and a small unknown about what the conversion did on the way through.
The Beam Solo followed on June 22 at 129.99 dollars, 119 pounds, or 139.99 euros. It is a headphone amp, which made it the first of those to run NAM, and it takes A2-Lite captures through the same app alongside 11 onboard amp models and CabRig speaker simulation.
Sonulab's StompStation landed in July with the most generous allowance of the lot. Each preset holds two A2 captures, natively, with no conversion, and the pedal runs standalone once you have loaded it. You manage everything through the VoidX-Control app first.
Darkglass Anagram and the Dimehead NAM Player both read NAM files natively as well, the Dimehead pulling them straight over USB alongside its IRs. The MOD Dwarf runs Nano profiles, and LAVA's Studio smart amp joined the list this year too.
None of these are compromised products. They are all one device short of independent, which only becomes a problem when your phone is dead and the support act is running late.
The trade is money and slots. A Beam Solo costs 129.99 dollars against 499 for the cheapest HeadRush, and Sonulab hands you two captures per preset where HeadRush allows one per rig. Valeton's GP-5 holds 80 of them. You are paying a lot for the convenience of not reaching for anything else.
HeadRush also wants a live Wi-Fi connection to browse, so a venue with no usable network puts you back on whatever you loaded at home. The difference is that you loaded it without a laptop.
TONE3000's position on this is unusually direct. Its documentation now ships a template email you can send to those companies asking them to add A2 support, which is not the tone of an organization expecting a friendly phone call.
The blind listening results go some way to explaining the reluctance. When an open format maintained largely by volunteers posts higher median accuracy scores than your flagship product, adding support for it becomes an awkward internal conversation rather than a routine roadmap item.
The format keeps spreading regardless, and mostly downward. A2-Lite runs at half capacity on a 600 MHz ARM chip that costs three dollars in bulk, which is why native NAM now turns up in practice amps, headphone boxes, and pedals cheaper than a decent set of tubes.
What changed in August was not native playback. Roughly a dozen products already had that. It was what sits between the online library and the pedal on your floor.
That gap matters more than the feature checkbox. Only one lineup currently offers on-board access to the whole TONE3000 catalog with nothing else paired, plugged in, or switched on.
Conversion is the tax the budget boxes charge
Valeton's GP series does not read .nam files at all. You run them through the GP-200 or GP-100 editor on a desktop, and Valeton's SnapTone engine rewrites each capture into its own format before the pedal will touch it.It works, and it works well enough that nobody should sneer at it. The GP-5 holds up to 80 converted captures and 20 IRs, which is a lot of tones for the money. But everything runs at 44.1 kHz, your firmware and editor versions have to match exactly, and the file you end up with is no longer a NAM file.
Hotone's Ampero II series converts over USB too. So does the Sonicake Pocket Master, which costs around 65 dollars and runs its converted captures at 48 kHz. The NUX Amp Academy Stomp does not really load them at all, routing NAM through USB audio and the effects loop instead.
Pedals that convert NAM files into a proprietary format are not lying to anyone. They just add a step, a computer, and a small unknown about what the conversion did on the way through.
Blackstar got there first with an app in the way
The Beam Mini arrived in May at 229.99 dollars, 169 pounds, or 189 euros. It runs A2-Nano natively, holds one full-rig capture at a time, and reaches roughly 200,000 community tones through the Beam app on your phone.The Beam Solo followed on June 22 at 129.99 dollars, 119 pounds, or 139.99 euros. It is a headphone amp, which made it the first of those to run NAM, and it takes A2-Lite captures through the same app alongside 11 onboard amp models and CabRig speaker simulation.
Sonulab's StompStation landed in July with the most generous allowance of the lot. Each preset holds two A2 captures, natively, with no conversion, and the pedal runs standalone once you have loaded it. You manage everything through the VoidX-Control app first.
Darkglass Anagram and the Dimehead NAM Player both read NAM files natively as well, the Dimehead pulling them straight over USB alongside its IRs. The MOD Dwarf runs Nano profiles, and LAVA's Studio smart amp joined the list this year too.
None of these are compromised products. They are all one device short of independent, which only becomes a problem when your phone is dead and the support act is running late.
The trade is money and slots. A Beam Solo costs 129.99 dollars against 499 for the cheapest HeadRush, and Sonulab hands you two captures per preset where HeadRush allows one per rig. Valeton's GP-5 holds 80 of them. You are paying a lot for the convenience of not reaching for anything else.
HeadRush also wants a live Wi-Fi connection to browse, so a venue with no usable network puts you back on whatever you loaded at home. The difference is that you loaded it without a laptop.
The expensive modelers still ignore NAM entirely
Neural DSP, IK Multimedia, Line 6, and Fractal Audio do not run NAM captures on their hardware. Not converted, not natively, not at all.TONE3000's position on this is unusually direct. Its documentation now ships a template email you can send to those companies asking them to add A2 support, which is not the tone of an organization expecting a friendly phone call.
The blind listening results go some way to explaining the reluctance. When an open format maintained largely by volunteers posts higher median accuracy scores than your flagship product, adding support for it becomes an awkward internal conversation rather than a routine roadmap item.
The format keeps spreading regardless, and mostly downward. A2-Lite runs at half capacity on a 600 MHz ARM chip that costs three dollars in bulk, which is why native NAM now turns up in practice amps, headphone boxes, and pedals cheaper than a decent set of tubes.
