Positive Grid has expanded its digital guitar amp and multi-effects eco-system with the Spark Pedal, a compact unit powered by its HD Tone Engine and featuring an onboard looper and the many of the smart features that helped revolutionise the desktop amp market.
Again, this is electric guitar tone seeking perched out on the frontiers of digital innovation; the technologists among you will surely be excited by the AI-powered Text To Tone features offered via the accompanying Spark app, and the capability to browse more than 100,000 tones on Positive Grid’s ToneCloud, and putting together a custom signal chain from whichever amps, effects, and cab emulations that take your fancy.
Old Spark favourites such as Audio Chords, which listens to the track you are playing along to and gives you the chords in real-time, are present and correct.
“This gig-ready rig makes it easy to bring the tone and power of Spark amps to live performances, rehearsals, home practice and recording sessions,” says Positive Grid. Designed for electric, bass and acoustic players, it incorporates into any setup for fast, intuitive tone building with no learning curve.”
It is easy to forget that all of this is a brave new world, and yet the success of the Spark platform has always been about presenting these smart and novel features in a way that we old fuddy-duddy analogue types can get behind.
In other words: is it easy to use? Does it feel like an amp? The setup certainly seems intuitive enough.
The Spark Pedal is a three-footswitch unit that can be easily thrown into a backpack. One footswitch toggles between Amp and FX Modes.
In Amp Mode, the knobs control Gain, Bass, Middle, Treble “like a traditional amp head” while FX Mode appropriates those same controls for Drive, Modulation, Delay, and Reverb depth.
There are, of course, presets. Out of the box you get 33 amp models and 43 effects. Again, the ToneCloud is where there are thousands upon thousands of news sounds to explore.
Positive Grid have designed the Spark Pedal to be an all-in-one fly rig; everything you need to play a show is here. Simply send the signal direct to the PA system.
Similarly, you can use it as a guitar audio interface and tone hub, and use it as recording solution. There is a headphones output for silent practice, too, and you can stream audio to it via Bluetooth for playing along to an accompaniment.
Alternatively, just use it in the old-school way of any other preamp/multi-effects pedal and hook it up in front of your amp – or in its effects loop – and use it alongside the other pedals on your ‘board.
The onboard looper gives you 60 seconds of looping time, and all these features – record, overdub, etc – is operated via the footswitches.
The Spark Pedal is available now, priced £169/$199. Head over to Positive Grid for more.
