Positive Grid announced the Spark PEDAL today, September 9. $199 street, available now direct, through dealers, and on Amazon.
The spec sheet, as published:
- 33 amp models, 43 effects, plus ToneCloud access (Positive Grid claims 100,000+ user tones)
- Three footswitches, six presets across two banks
- Multifunction knobs — in Amp Mode they're Gain / Bass / Mid / Treble; in FX Mode they become Drive / Modulation / Delay / Reverb depth
- 60-second looper with record, overdub, and undo, run from the footswitches
- Built-in tuner (center knob)
- Rechargeable battery, up to 7 hours
- Stereo headphone out, USB audio interface, Bluetooth for playing along to your phone, and a line out you can run to a PA
- Voiced for electric, bass, and acoustic
- Free Spark app on top: Text to Tone, Build Your Rig, Auto Chords, ToneCloud browsing, looper control
Every roundup this week is going to lead with "33 amps for $199." That is the least interesting number on the page. Thirty-three amps is table stakes now — a Valeton GP-5 costs $80 and a TONEX One costs $199 and both of them will bury you in models. Model count stopped being a differentiator around 2023.
The Number That Actually Matters Is Six
Six presets. Two banks. Three footswitches.
I gig direct to PA with an HX Stomp and no amp on stage. I soundcheck in four minutes. So I have opinions about how many patches a set actually needs, and the honest answer is: fewer than you think, but the layout is what kills you.
Six presets is genuinely enough for a set. Clean, edge-of-breakup, main dirt, lead boost, an ambient thing, and one weird one — that's a whole night for most bands, and it's more than the four Elena keeps on her Stomp. The problem isn't six. The problem is two banks and three footswitches.
With three switches and two banks, you cannot reach all six presets without a bank change. That means somewhere in your set, between two songs, there is a two-press move instead of a one-press move. If your set is sequenced so that the bank flip always lands between songs, you will never notice. If you need to jump from preset 2 to preset 5 inside a song — clean verse to lead — you're now doing a bank shift mid-bar with your foot, and that is a thing you will miss at least once in front of people.
So the real buying question isn't "is 33 amps enough." It's: can you sequence your set so every bank change lands in a gap? Sit down with your actual setlist and map it. Six slots, two groups of three, one flip. If the map works, this pedal can play the gig. If your set needs four sounds inside one song, it can't, and no firmware update fixes footswitch count.
That's not a knock. That's the deal at $199, and it's an honest deal. A Stomp gives you more switches and costs four times as much.
Where It Actually Beats the Competition
Three things on this list are genuinely better than what the $200 field currently offers, and they're all the boring specs.
The battery. Seven hours, internal, rechargeable. TONEX One doesn't have one. GP-5 doesn't have one. A modeler with no wall wart is a different object than a modeler with a wall wart — it goes in a backpack, it works on a porch, it works in a green room with two outlets and a bass player who got there first. I have spent more of my life solving power problems on stage than solving tone problems. This removes a whole category of problem.
Stereo headphone out plus Bluetooth. This is the practice rig. Phone plays the song over Bluetooth, guitar goes in the front, both come out the headphone jack. That is the entire reason the Spark amps sold — see our practice amps breakdown — and now it's in a pedal that also does the gig.
USB audio interface. You record into a DAW off the same box. Not a huge deal if you already own an interface, an enormous deal if you don't, because it's the difference between "I have a pedal" and "I have a way to make a demo."
The looper is the one I'd temper expectations on. Sixty seconds is a practice looper, not a performance looper. At 100 BPM in 4/4, sixty seconds is about 25 bars — a verse and a chorus, maybe. It's great for working out a part over a chord bed. It is not a build-a-song-live tool. If you were hoping to do the layered-loop thing on stage, read our looper, delay, and reverb chain order piece first, and then buy a real looper.
The Knob Thing Is a Real Trade, Not a Gimmick
Four knobs that change meaning between Amp Mode and FX Mode is a sensible answer to a small enclosure, and it will annoy you in exactly one scenario: when you want to fix a dirt problem and an EQ problem in the same thirty seconds. Amp Mode has Gain and the tone stack. FX Mode has Drive. Those two dirt sources interact, and they live on opposite sides of a mode button.
That's fine at home. On a dark stage between songs, it's a mode press you'll fumble. The workaround is the one that works on every small modeler: pick your dirt source once and commit. Get all your gain from the amp block and use the FX drive purely as a level boost, or vice versa. Don't split gain across both and expect to sort it out live. That's the same discipline our beginner signal chains guide preaches, and it matters more, not less, as the box gets smaller.
Text to Tone Is the Same Claim Positive Grid Made in June
The app carries Text to Tone, which is the descendant of the Amp Intelligence engine Positive Grid put in the REACTOR combo back in June. Dev's read on it then was that the text-to-chain path is the genuinely interesting one and the rest is demo material, and nothing about putting it in a $199 pedal changes that analysis.
I'll add one thing from the live-sound side. Prompt-generated tones have a specific failure mode: they sound great in headphones and disappear in a band. The model optimizes for a pleasing solo tone, which usually means scooped mids and generous reverb, which is exactly the tone that vanishes the second a bass player and a snare drum show up. If you build patches by prompt, check the mids before you trust them — see why a tone sounds good in headphones and bad in the room. Prompt first, then push the mids back up. Every time.
Who Should Actually Buy This
If you own a Helix, a Stomp, or a Quad Cortex, this is not an upgrade and nobody is claiming it is.
If you're buying your first modeler and the choice is Spark PEDAL versus TONEX One versus a Valeton GP-5, the split is clean: TONEX One if you want captures and one killer sound. GP-5 if $80 is the number. Spark PEDAL if you want one box that practices, records, and gigs — the battery, the headphone out, the interface, and six switchable presets are a genuinely different feature set than either of those, and $199 for all four is a fair price.
And if you're the player who has a day job and a real budget and you want to know what you actually give up at each tier before you spend, start with the best modeler under $500. That article is the one that saves you money. This pedal is just the newest reason to read it.
Dig Deeper on Fader & Knob
- Practice amps: Mustang, Spark, and HX Stomp — the small-rig comparison this pedal now slots into
- The best modeler under $500 — what each price tier actually buys you
- Starter pedalboard under $300 in 2026 — the all-in-one-versus-pedals math, run honestly
- Beginner signal chains — pick one dirt source and commit; it matters most on small boxes
