Amp

Solar Beta

Name: Solar Beta
Brand: Smear Audio
Price: 19.9 EUR
Availability: InStock

€19.90$22.90£16.90

VST3AUStandaloneCircuit-derived model

The Solar Beta is a component-level model of a cult solid-state beast from the turn of the '80s — the amp that traded glass tubes for a CMOS preamp and, against all expectations, became a doom, sludge, and stoner favourite. Enormous clean headroom, then a thick, gnarly, unmistakably solid-state grind when you lean on it. We modeled the whole signal path: the CMOS gain stages with their distinctive negative-feedback clipping, the interactive Bass / Mid / Treble tone stack, and the near-linear power section with its hard rail ceiling. It's two fully independent channels — each with its own Drive, Bass, Mid, Treble, and Level — that you can run one at a time or stacked together with the Channel switch. The Mode switch re-voices the whole amp between its Lead and Bass personalities: Lead for tight, cutting midrange and singing gain, Bass for a rounder, deeper, thunderous low end. From pristine solid-state clean to that heavy, saturated wall the original is worshipped for, the Solar Beta is a clean-to-crushing platform with a voice all its own.

Current version 1.3.0 (30 July 2026)

“A cult solid-state amp — huge

clean headroom into a thick, gnarly

CMOS grind, with dual Lead/Bass channels.”

Schematic parameters

Sets the gain of a channel's CMOS preamp, from clean solid-state headroom to the thick, gnarly negative-feedback grind the amp is known for. Each channel has its own.

Universal architecture

The Smear Audio Ecosystem: Common Amp Features

These are the ideas, design philosophies, and shared technical choices common to every Smear Audio amp. They are not one-off product notes or model-specific feature lists, but the baseline assumptions behind how we build our amplifier plugins.

Pure Circuit Soul

Instead of running our software through a single, compromise-heavy digital grid, every individual tube stage is calculated independently in real time.

Ghost Bloom - The Living Feedback Engine

Getting a software plugin to feed back naturally without a roaring 4x12 cabinet physically vibrating your guitar strings used to be a pipe dream. Our proprietary Ghost Bloom engine changes the game by emulating physical acoustic feedback with breathtaking realism.

The Custom Cab & Space Matrix

An extraordinary amplifier needs a real environment to breathe. Our unified speaker platform offers a range of distinct, classically voiced cabinet models to suit each amp's character, paired with an intuitive three-dimensional mic room.

Universal Input Boosters: On-Demand Analog Heat

In the real world, the perfect tone almost always starts with a great pedal slamming the front end of an amp. We have hardwired two switchable, analog-modeled boost circuits directly into the top bar of every interface.