BRAND NEW: Friedman BE Mini

Published on 28 May 2021

Do you love high gain overdrive?

Of course you do, you’re a guitarist! Plugging a nice guitar into an amp that delivers a top quality roar is one of the most satisfying things a guitar player can do. Whether you launch into an expressive solo or just whack a chunky open G chord and let it ring, great distortion is a thing to behold.

That’s why we love Friedman amplifiers.

It’s not just us, either. Since Dave Friedman moved on from modifying amps for famous users (Eddie Van Halen, Jerry Cantrell) and began making his own models, his sound has been the high gain tone to beat. The 80s had modded Marshall JCM800’s, the 90s had Mesa Dual Rectifiers, the 00s had the Diezel Herbert, and now we have the Friedman BE. Regardless of your style preference and even guitar preference, if you enjoy overdrive in any description, you’ll love the sound of the Friedman BE.

Friedman BE Mini – For the Home and the Studio

Of course, the trouble with boutique amplifiers – apart from the high cost and heavy weight – is the volume. It’s just getting harder and harder to crank up a roaring 100w stack these days, even at the venue or rehearsal room, far less your home! What we guitarists need is a small, compact amp head that delivers that perfect, harmonically rich high gain tone at home-friendly volume levels.

What we need is the Friedman BE Mini.

We don’t know how they’ve done it, but Dave Friedman and his team have managed to take that incredible crunch tone of the full-sized BE-100 head (and the awesome BE-OD pedal) and distil it into a tiny little 30w solid state amp head! When we say tiny, we’re talking nine and a half inches wide! This little guy will find a home anywhere, so tight studio spaces and small practice rooms will not have to be strategically rearranged in order to host this little beast! It only weighs 4lbs, but sonically, it’s a true heavyweight.

The Friedman BE Mini is a single channel, solid state head with a 30w Class D power amp. You can attach any sized cab to this, and the 24v universal voltage power supply ensures that it’ll run perfectly anywhere in the world. Wherever you go, you can enjoy exceptional overdriven tone.

Simply Designed

The Friedman BE Mini is a simple affair to work with. Most of the controls are self-explanatory, from the volume to the gain and three band EQ, it’s all standard stuff. A couple of switches labelled Cut and Tight allow you to further sculpt the high- and low-end response of your tone, too. There are a wealth of variations on hand here, all of them bearing that distinctly ‘modded British’ sound that Friedman fans love so much. It’s remarkable from such a small device!

A series FX loop is built into the back panel, allowing you to properly work with your modulation and ambient effects without compromising that great distortion. You could also use the BE Mini as a preamp for other amps, effectively transforming whatever amp you use into a fire-breathing BE style tone dragon!

Available Now

This little amp is such a good deal: we expect it to fly out the guitarguitar stores! Friedman’s BE sound is the tone to have for any fans of overdrive, and this little box o’ tricks offers it up without any fuss or hassle. It’s easy to use, extremely portable and instantly delivers tone to die for. What on earth are you waiting for?

Click to View the Friedman BE Mini