It’s also worth noting that the rubber sleeve of the amp is easily removable – given that all previous Sparks have come with different colour options down the line, we wouldn’t bet against Positive Grid coming out with some phone case-esque swappable sleeves in different patterns and colours down the line. It’s a little thing, but a nice way for PG to empower users to make the GO feel more like theirs out of the box. While there’s no option to do this for the GO (yet) we are pleasantly surprised to find that it comes with some customisation options in the box – in addition to the default gold and black basketweave grille and red/black reversible leather carry handle you also get a second hard black plastic grille with herringbone pattern, and a rubber handle made of the same material as the amp is coated in. Both previous Sparks have detachable speaker grilles that you can replace with a personalised design ordered direct from Positive Grid. Perhaps the cleverest and most obvious bit of industrial design on the GO is the guitar volume knob, which also doubles as the cup of the input jack – on a unit where the controls are generally pretty small and a little fiddly, having a big gold knob to determine the most important thing has to be a good thing.Īnother thing the GO offers is out-of-the-box customisation. The only thing missing from the Mini is a 3.5mm aux input, and who’s still streaming music like that really? Other than that, the only compromises, if you can call them that, are that you have a single button to switch between the four presets as opposed to a rotary knob, and the power/bluetooth pairing is now controlled by a single button. Just like the Mini we have separate controls for guitar and bluetooth audio volume, plus the ability to select from four hardware signal chain presets, a headphone out, guitar input, plus USB-C output for recording. The Mini managed to squeeze everything into itself by making some compromises in terms of control layout and connectivity compared to the 40-watt version, and we expected a similar stripping back to make things work here, but remarkably that’s not really the case. It’s not the most premium experience in the world, but it’s also reassuring – the rubber gives it a grippiness when you have it resting on a hard surface, and it also gives the vibe that you won’t need to panic to much if you drop it, or worry about it getting damaged carrying it around in your back or pocket. Holding it in your hand, it feels different to the previous Sparks, too – gone is the classic Tolex covering, replaced with a textured rubber sleeve over the plastic shell. Getting it out of the box, the first thing you notice is the weight – at just under a pound it strikes a nice balance between ‘reassuringly weighty’ while not being something you are gonna get a sore shoulder from if you have it stashed in a rucksack all day. It’s roughly the size of a compact stompbox, or a couple of packs of cigarettes stacked on top of each other if you prefer, and yet somehow it’s a genuine, bona fide guitar amp. Well, first we need to talk about the size – we thought the Mini was small, but this is so small it feels like it’s showing off. What’s more the Spark comes with a suite of revolutionary app-enabled features that lean on PG’s amp modelling expertise to provide a huge array of onboard sounds, as well as hugely impressive practice and learning features such as the we-used-AI-before-it-was-cool SmartJam feature, which listens to your playing and creates a bespoke backing track to accompany you.įast-forward a couple of years and the Mini – a Spark that was effectively a third of the size of the original, battery-powered and portable, yet still sporting all of the functionality and great sound of the original – redefined what we believed that a portable practice amp was capable of, so what of 2023’s new darling, the GO? The original Spark 40 was the first guitar amp product from US software amp sim specialists Positive Grid and effectively promised to be the ultimate desktop amp – a 40-watt, two-speaker lunchbox amp that also acts as a USB recording interface and Bluetooth speaker. READ MORE: The Big Review: Victory Sheriff 25 – the ultimate Marshall-style lunchbox head?īut first, a refresher for those who perhaps haven’t been following the rapid rise of the Spark since it debuted just before the pandemic.But now it’s 2023 and there’s a new Spark on the block – and this one’s even smaller and more portable than the Mini… does that mean the Spark GO is ready to ascend the throne? Let’s find out. Last year, we reviewed Positive Grid’s second smart amp, the Spark Mini, and confidently told you that the milk-carton-sized box of wonder was the best practice amp that money could buy.
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