Desktop amp / final round

Gear
#1

Hi people,

I’m doing that very guitarist thing that we do from time to time… looking at gear! Maybe a desperate attempt to get the tone my hands won’t get me.

I’m looking for a desktop amp. I have a Blackstar ID Core Beam and I’ve been pretty content with it but I have some minor niggles: under-the-hood editing goes through laptop software (no dedicated app), limited effects and EQ is a bit strange (again, only software editing seems to be the solution).

I can sell it for a decent price any day of the week.

I’m looking at two alternatives/upgrades:

  1. POSITIVE GRID SPARK40
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    This has been seriously touted as the ultimate practice amp lately. It’s brilliant that they managed to cram so many effects and amp voicings into it and the rave reviews seem to back up the product.

However… delivery times are apparently terrible (customers can wait for months! how outrageous is that?), only 1-year warranty and power adapter seems to be terrible. Just some minor things maybe.

The audio quality seems to be pretty good.

  1. YAMAHA THR10IIw
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Pricey! But the quality seems to be unbelievable for this category. It seems to have a good variety of amp voices to please plenty of players, good sound quality and a good app to go with it for further editing.

Not as flashy as PG’s Spark in terms of software, no tonecloud, no looping, etc. Nothing is perfect.

The price difference is massive but I’m happy to say I’m not too worried about it. I want to know your honest opinion.

I’m looking for something compact, not too loud (only home practice and recording) but with good audio quality.

Should I give the Blackstar ID core the boot or cherish it a bit more? Should I fall for the “get-tone” idea of PG’s Spark or go for the Yamaha?

Thanks!

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#2

If you’re into higher gain stuff I cannot recommend the Yamaha THR10X enough. One of the best purchases I’ve made as far as practice amps go. Yamaha’s THR range in general should have something you like if you need less emphasis on high-gain modeling.

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#3

Good to know. I don’t play trash-death-etc metal. I like high gain as in “brown” sounds and other guitar-hero tones for lead but talking about high-gain I’m more an Iron Maiden guy than Metallica.

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#4

I haven’t tried them personally but the Yamaha amps have an excellent reputation. I’ve seen quite a few forummers posting nice things about them, including video examples where I really liked the tone. I think @Skye used a Yamaha amp for some “Show & Tell” videos, for example. I remember that he had a killer tone there.

I know that also Troy has one and likes it.

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#5

I would highly recommend. Really awesome tone.

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#6

I recently bought the Yamaha amp (same model, but not wireless), and I’m very happy with it. Living in an apartment, never got to turn up my old amp past 1, but this little beast sounds great even at low volume. Installed the software to edit tones, but haven’t gotten around to playing with it yet. Think you have more options dialing in tones with the software than just with the control knobs. Need to get around to that soon.

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#7

Wow, I can see why the Yamaha is so popular.

(That’s some tone you’ve got there @Skye).

Maybe anyone can comment on the cleans as well?

I’ll get round to the shop this weekend and try it for myself as well. It’s a real shame PG’s distribution is so poor, it would be really nice to be able to try it first-hand.

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#8

I picked up a Spark last month and haven’t regretted it. I didn’t encounter the long shipping times that others have reported so YMMV. They’ve been running a bunch of sales on them lately so you can pick one up for a pretty good deal.

Pros:

  • Low profile. Mine sits on my work desk without taking up a lot of space. Easy to just flip on and noodle for a bit
  • Sound quality. I’ve been a Postiive Grid fan for years and their tones get better and better. Not quite to the level of my Kemper, but better than any VST I’ve played
  • Flexibility. Having it function as a Bluetooth speaker is really cool when you just want to jam along with something.
  • Variety. The built-in tones are a good starting point and you can usually find something close to what you want via the community-powered tones.

Cons

  • A mobile device is essential to really unlock it’s full potential. It’s basically a computer and it needs some kind of user-interface for its more complex features. Not a deal-break for me, but could be for other folks
  • You mobile device may try to make two Bluetooth connections to the amp: one to control it and one to play audio. I found that playing audio with both connections causes a lot of drop-outs.

I can’t speak to the Yamaha, though I know it gets rave reviews. But I’d give the Spark a 9/10.

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#9

I’ll second the Spark :+1:
The sound quality is excellent and there are some fantastic presets on the Tonecloud which are all free to download. Its also really convenient for playing backing tracks through the mobile app and the sound quality doesn’t sound muffled which happens when playing them through a guitar amp.
The shipping problems I think were solved when they caught up with the massive pre sales that they had. I got mine in 5 days from ordering.
Hope this helps :slightly_smiling_face:

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#10

Thanks @DjangoUntrained and @alexvollmer for the input.

Because I don’t have the opportunity to try it myself maybe you can elaborate a bit more on a couple of points?

  1. Is it too loud? I’m looking for something that sounds good at low volumes for room practice and I don’t want to intimidate the whole block with the new toy…

  2. How is it dynamically speaking? My biggest quibble with the blackstar is that the too high-gain channels are too compressed and dynamically limited…

Thanks a lot.

#11

It sounds good at lower levels and through headphones ( which is my preferred way of using it due to living in an apartment). I haven’t tried it at all at higher volumes so I can’t really comment on that.
I’m not really very knowledgeable in speaker compression etc , but it sounds pretty good to me and is the most convenient way of jamming to backing tracks that I have found. I will say though that it can sound a bit bassy on some of the presets but you can easily tweak them to your preference.
Also I cant vouch for the higher gain presets as I go for the SRV/ Hendrix sound of which there are tons of nice ones. The higher gain ones that I have tried sound pretty good but a djent aficionado might disagree :slightly_smiling_face:
Like you, I had heard a lot about it and decided to give it a go and I was nicely surprised

#12

This sort of sums up my question. I also live in a flat so having low-volume quality is key.

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#13

I find that the Spark has a great volume range. It’s quiet enough to not irritate everyone around you and can put out a surprising amount of volume if needed. One day the family was out of the house and I decided to see how loud it would get and by golly, you could pull off some gigs with it if you had to.

As for the speaker, keep in mind that the Spark is using a full-range frequency-response (FRFR) speaker. So all the compression comes from the software (which I think is pretty good). Hopefully that helps!

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#14

Good to know. The days ahead will be quite busy for me trying to make a decision…

#15

Hey, have fun with that. And let us know what you‘ll decide and why. I‘d be interested in that.

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#16

This is sort of where I am

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#17

Very nice chart! :slight_smile:

For extra fun you can even build a poll so that people can vote for Spark VS Yamaha by using the cogwheel → build a poll option in the post editor (It’s about to get meta alert):

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#18
  • Yamaha THR10ii
  • Postive Grid’s Spark 40

0 voters

#19

Well, there it goes. It’s always fun.

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#20

Just an idea out of left field. Do you need a physical amp? I prefer amp sims and I can play them through my monitors if I want to make loud noises but mostly use headphones. Amplitube 5 just came out and is excellent. I do have a Spark and an older version of the Yamaha. I don’t think you can go wrong with either if you want a physical device. Spark has more features with the app and such but if you just want to plug in and play I might give the nod to the Yamaha.

1 Like