Meet Neko, A Mini AI Guitar Rig. Built by Neko Engineering, Powered by LALAL.AI
For years, stem separation lived in the cloud, and that meant it stayed off the stage. You’d open a browser tab, upload a file, wait a few moments, and only then get back isolated vocal, guitar, drum, bass or other stems. That’s how most people see LALAL.AI even today. But it’s no longer a whole story.
This year, our stem separation engine found a new home, and it now lives inside an AI-powered guitar rig, a pocket-sized device called Neko, built by our partners, Neko Engineering. The device runs our technology locally, on the hardware itself.
What Neko Actually Does
Neko is a multitool for guitarists which combines an amp modeler, effects processor, DAW, stem splitter, and recorder in one pocket-sized wireless device.
How Does Neko Replace All These?
- Neko’s Neural Guitar FX, based on NAM A2 Full and connected directly to TONE3000, the world’s largest community of tones, contains 250K+ tones to shape your sound.
- Thanks to Stem Splitter, powered by LALAL.AI, Neko splits any song streamed to it over Bluetooth into guitar, bass, drums, and vocals in real time.
- Tabs Converter turns guitar stems into readable tabs.
- Time Machine records everything you play and organizes riffs in a simple timeline, so that you never forget what you’ve played.
- With AI Arranger, Neko turns your raw riff into a full track, building a backing track around it.
You can send the sound out however you need it, be it headphones, the built-in speaker, or an amp or PA, wired or wireless. Plug in a laptop or phone over USB, and Neko works as an audio interface. Over Bluetooth, your guitar can double as a wireless mic.
Play it wired or through the direct signal path, and the response feels immediate, closer to plugging into an amp than waiting on software.
Then there’s the way it looks! Most guitar gear is built to survive a stage floor, and it shows. Neko takes a different route. This is a compact, clean device you’d happily keep in plain sight next to your guitar.
The Red Dot jury agreed. Neko won the Red Dot Award: Design Concept 2026 and will be on display at the Red Dot Design Museum in Singapore, as well as in the Red Dot Design Concept Yearbook 2026/2027, an annual publication sent to design museums and schools worldwide.
Where LALAL.AI Comes In
You can feed it any song over Bluetooth, mic, USB or as a file, and Neko’s built-in Stem Splitter separates vocals, drums, bass, and guitar in real time, entirely on the device. It lets you mute a part and play it yourself, slow a passage down to learn it and speed it back up, change the tuning, and transcribe a part into tabs.
All of this works locally, and nothing leaves the device.
Neko isn’t a simplified, watered-down version of our separation model squeezed onto a chip. It’s the same core technology that powers local stem separation inside our VST plugin and desktop app, re-engineered to run without an internet connection, latency, upload queue, or a browser tab opened in the background.
Tech Specifications
- Size and weight: 3.4 × 2.1 × 0.5 in, 5 oz, fits in a pocket
- Screen and brain: 3.5" touchscreen, onboard NPU, 4 GB RAM, runs tone modeling and stem separation without the cloud
- Wireless jacks: two tiny transmitters shaped like standard 6.3mm guitar jacks, one on your guitar, one on your amp, no cables needed (like AirPods, but for guitar)
- Wired option: standard 6.3mm input and output, mix wired and wireless as you like
- Pickups: works with active and passive pickups, including single-coils and 7-string active setups, with automatic tone adaptation and plenty of headroom
- Sound out: 3-watt built-in speaker, plus hi-Z and low-Z headphone outs
- Connectivity: USB-C and Bluetooth audio interface, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for cloud features
- Extras: built-in tuner and metronome
- Battery life: ~6 hours (main unit), ~3 hours (wireless jacks)
Neko Is Available to Pre-Order
Neko’s Kickstarter campaign is now live, and LALAL.AI customers get access to a pledge tier at $349 (instead of $399), so now is the right time to pre-order your rig while the discount is live! The first units will be shipped to backers in April, 2027.
Wherever you make music, we’ll handle the stems.
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