Positive Grid Spark 2 50W Smart Guitar Practice Amp & Bluetooth Speaker with Built-in Looper, AI Features & Smart App for Electric, Acoustic, & Bass Guitar

After seeing all the endless hype of Positive Grid stuff (and having owned the Spark Mini before), I decided to finally take the plunge and order a Spark 2 that was on sale.... Pros: 1 - Sounds : sounds great for a tabletop amplifier. This wont replace your tube amplifier (or even high end modeller) but it will give you the essential tones needed to practice, teach and probably gig with if used correctly via the Line Out. It definitely does higher gain sounds better than it does cleaner/crunchier tones as I find myself loving the YJM100 Plexi and Soldano amps for my core distortion tones. It can also get loud! 2 - Feature Set : 2 banks of patches (8 in total), built in effects, looper and line-out make this a complete package for practicing and even recording. Having a dedicated knob for your guitar volume and a separate one for audio-playback is really important as I am glad the Spark 2 has it laid out the way it does. 3 - Build Quality : simply excellent. Leagues above anything else in the same price range as it looks great with the faux amp covering and grill. It all feels premium out of the box with the cool packaging and included strap for it - nice! 4 - App: while I am not a fan of app-reliant amplifiers, the Spark app is one of the most slick experiences I have had compared to other companies like Boss, Yamaha and NUX. Once you load in your sounds, you can turn the app off and use it standalone while saving things from the amp itself. 5 - Bluetooth : really impressed that the Spark 2 essentially has 2 bluetooth channels ; one for app control and one for audio. This means I can stream music from my laptop and edit the amplifier using my phone - honestly, bloody brilliant as a guitar teacher! Playback sounds great as It can be your house multi-medi boombox quite easily. Cons: 1 - Effects : some of the built in effects are just bad (the phaser is diabolical), as I largely have issue with the stompbox and modulation effects with not much choice on offer compared to other products out there (NUX Mighty Space has way more in this department). I generally find myself using the core amp sounds with delays/reverbs as those actually sound quite good when dialed in. 2 - Additional Bits Cost £££ : if you just want the amplifier, no problem. If you want the internal battery, the footswitch and the carry bag then prepare to pay way more on top for the whole setup. Add up all that cash and you can grab a smaller tube combo for home or a larger digital/solid state amplifier with way more options included. 3 - App Reliance : simply put you need the phone app to load in different effects, operate the looper/rhythm parts properly and get full functionality from the amp. Also sucks that there is no dedicated PC application as I like to do most things from a laptop. If you are a purist and hate smart phones, look elswhere! 4 - Sensitive To Placement : a tabletop amp like the Spark 2 can sound really different when you have it on the floor or well... a tabletop! I generally found it a bit too muddy on the floor with some weird overtones in the high end as I think it sounds best on top of a guitar cabinet, amp stand or a small stool. Sounds oddly specific but experiment on the placement of the amp in your room as you will get wildly different results. Overall, it is a quality product as I think the hype is well deserved with the Spark 2. It is a solid option for practicing, teaching and recording that should get you playing in no time!

I have sold all my guitar gear to get the and I don't regret it one bit. The amp is tiny but mighty. The tone cloud has nearly every artist you can think of and the effects of which there are thousands will have what you need to recreate that signature sound. I created my own backing track for a full concert and I have saved every sound I need into the 8 slots. I purchased the control x pedal to go with it. The master volume on the amp controls the master volume of the amp inside the software. The guitar volume controls how loud the guitar is overall And the music controls the music volume. Having stereo out makes it easy to go into my pa system which is 1800 watts. Now I have everything in a tiny beautiful box that I can control from the app on my phone. It truly feels like I have arrived at a time in my life where now I can go out and gig and no longer bogged down by wires and power supplies. Just one power supply. A fully Charged control x pedal and one guitar lead is all I have. Downsizing but upsizing in effects. My guitar playing has improved dramatically having the sound be closer to the actual artist. I'm having the best time with it and I've only had it for a few days. I'm going to get the battery next month for it. If you get this you won't be disappointed. Plugging the headphones into it disabled the speakers but the sound through your headphones is phenomenal. The built in tuner is brilliant as it shows you when you're in tune but it also shows you the drift to sharp or flat. Sometimes the string will be in tune but ever so slightly sharp or flat once the volume of the string dies down. Much better than any tuner I've had before. The amp controls the app dials of the virtual controls but not the other way round so bare that in mind. If you move a control when you are playing it will alter the whole sound. So you need to set the sound as you want it to be and store it. Then when you select the patch you want its all set. If you have a sound set that has a lower volume stored it will play at the lower volume. This is excellent as sometimes you don't want to adjust the volume on the fly you can do that with your guitar volume but you might want to be arriving at a lower volume. With this amp you can do that. Truly outstanding bit of kit. Don't get the 40 version as it doesn't have the output to pa and sound quality not as good at 50. Highest recommendation I can give and even though it's classed as a practice amp I'm using it with a pa and using it live. It's perfectly capable once you have stored all your sounds in the amp. I would not use the Bluetooth live but only for downloading and modifying your sound before hand. The great part also to mention is that once your sound is stored you don't need to open the app to modify the effects as the amp dials affect the delay and reverb gain etc on the actual amp. If you are a serious guitar player like me get it. 5 million stars

This is an incredible amp. I had a Rock School Guitar exam coming up. I needed something that was small but powerful. This is it. The size is perfect, it's not that heavy to carry. This will be perfect for my busking in the future. This amp has everything that you need. You have access to thousands of different tones. You can play to your favourite tracks on YouTube, it's a game changer to your improvement. I practice longer now on a daily basis, even longer at the weekend. This amp is so much fun. Functionality is very very impressive. I used the mains, my electricity surged, I was taking my exam. I am buying the battery, that will be here soon. I will be busking eventually. If you can afford it this amp is worth every penny. Your Guitar and Bass playing will improve so much.

Excellent compact practice amp even for bass (though the app is focused more on guitar as the sample songs aren’t available with bass tabs). Good sound at practice volumes. Would be good as performance accompaniments to acoustic instruments

Full disclosure - I bought this for my man, so he's going to write the rest of the review... So impressed with this bit of kit. So, so, so much better than my old (much larger) Stagg practice amp. The Spark amp is easily good enough for club/pub performance. (I don't!) It has a built in looper, reverb etc. It comes with a range of amp/speaker settings - quite a few of which were a bit 'metal', but they are all re-programmable. I immediately bought the rechargeable battery for it from Spark as well - not cheap for a battery but it lasts ages before needing a recharge, so glad I did. Best of all I think, is that you kind of become part of a community with the Spark 2. Using the app you can download other guitar templates that other Spark users have made available and by and large, you can find the amp/speaker template that you want, and make your guitar immediately have the tone and feel of your favorite guitarist. The app also gives you access to many chord sequence backing tracks, so you can noodle away to your heart's content. Personally, I'm no shredder, so I tend to play some soulful blues lead, to those kind of sequences. I bought Lekato digital links too, which work perfectly with the Spark. So, no mains cable for me, and no trailing jack lead either.... now I can wander about the house and annoy people from any room! P.S. Works great with my electronic drum kit too.

I'm still getting used to all the things this amp can do - It's very clever! My old practice amp was a Roland RX microcube, which had good reviews I recall when it was first introduced. But compared to this new tech with the Positive Grid Spark it's useless. I bought it with one thing in mind, to get a reasonable copy tone of my favourite Matchless Amp with effects, which would have cost me 3k+ to buy, so not an option as I'm an intermediate at best player. So the AI search part of the Spark gave me a number of quite good copies and one quite good one, which I am happy with for now. Saving presets in various ways is a bit confusing, and the sound from the speakers is not great as they are so small I guess. Clean tones are excellent though, So overall I'd say this is a good buy as a starter amp with lots of variables to find the sound you are after.

Sound quality is fine for a practice amp, it’s not up there with valve amps but I can now save that for gigs and not deafen the neighbours. The thing that blows me away is all of the functionality accessed via the internet, want to play a new song or copy your latest muse; just type in what you want and the amp will come up with suggested tones that mimic sound. It gives you many variation which you can use the amps controls to tweak till your happy, then save it either to the amp (8 patches) or to the cloud (limitless patches) Wow!!! Then there’s the battery, charge it and play for hours cable free. Turn down the volume and, unlike the afore mentioned valve amps, maintain your tone just at a much lower volume so you can practice when everyone else has gone to bed. This thing is an amazing tool and I’m just beginning to scratch the surface of what it can do. The best thing is that it makes you want to practice and it makes it easy to do so anywhere at any time. I just wish I’d bought one sooner.

I bought this to use with a Ukulele Bass as the Positive Grid Mini I already had wasn't quite enough. I didn't need all the bells and whistles that this amp has (and I've never used them). All I need is something that gives the U-Bass similar 'oomph' to an upright double-bass -- and I need it in places where I can't plug into the mains. The bass response on the Mini is superb, so I had high hopes for this amp -- and it didn't disappoint. This is a modelling amp and most of the configuration is done through the Spark app. I applied the profile I'd already set up for the Mini and needed very little adjustment. The app gives a ton of control options. This means it might take a while before you get it sounding the way you want it to sound, but the necessary perseverance is well worth the effort. With the Spark Battery installed, it's perhaps a little heavier than I'd hoped, but still very portable (I carry mine in the official Spark Bag). Perhaps one day I'll use the looper or the onboard effects -- but I don't need them right now. This amp does everything I need it for; and does it well.