Positive Grid Spark Mini Review: Best Portable Guitar Amp

It's a pain to travel with acoustic guitars. They are larger, frailer, and more expensive than their solid-body electric guitar counterparts. Why do we carry them on airplanes or in the back of our SUV for camping? Volume. There is no guitar amplifier in hotel rooms or the woods.

What if there were? The new Positive Grid Mini is here. It's an app-controlled speaker that lets you play your favorite music and axe at the same time. It comes with buttons for a guitar strap, as well as easy juice-ups, and it has a built-in microphone.

The Spark Mini is a one-stop shop for portable guitar practice, performance, and even recording. You can badly imitate Eddie Van Halen if you bring along a beater electric guitar and an instrument cable.

Positively simple.

Positive Grid's app has a lot of features available, but the device itself is very plug-and-play. The small amplifier is ready to rock if you unbox the cube and charge it up. It was designed to be used in bedrooms and small studios, just like its predecessor. The newer version has a battery.

You can connect to your phone with a power button on the back. Plug your guitar into the quarter-inch jack on top, pick between one of the two, and you have a great stereo speaker. It is a simple, elegant system that will allow you to play in under a minute.

The little amplifier has feet to steady it and guitar strap holders on each side to tote it around, with anything from a string to an actual leather strap. It comes in either white or black, which is a nice touch for matchy-matchy people with white guitars. If you want it to look more metal, you can swap the gold and black speaker grill for a red one.

If you have a laptop with you, you can use it as a guitar interface for recording, which is great for sketching out song ideas.

Tone zone.

The sound is pushed to two small drivers, aiming to give you decent stereo effects even when you are sitting close to the amplifier. The Positive Grid app will allow you to get the most out of the four main preset that are linked to the far left knob.

You can choose between thousands of different preset options, with tons of simulations, for any guitar tone under the sun. The preset knob makes it easy to switch between rhythm guitar and lead tones for soloing. You don't need a lot of time to twist the knob. I would save the money if I was playing live a lot.

The app can even help you figure out how to play a song if you are having a hard time. If you are a beginner, these features could be helpful. They are just bundled for free. It is possible to tune your guitar with the lights on the preset knob, but it will not tell you if you are tuning to the right note. You can use an app on your phone.

I like the sound of it. The Spark Mini is a shining example of how far guitar amplifier-style digital signal processing has come in the past decade. I own and regularly play through vintage guitars, and the Spark Mini does a good job of replicating those tones, but with a bit less oomph than I hear out of two 10- or 12-inch speakers.

Out and about.

The weather has been getting nicer in Portland, Oregon, so I have taken to playing with the Spark Mini on my patio at the end of the day. I usually practice in a windowless room, but it is nice to have a break. A change of place can be the key to finishing a song that I am struggling with, or for letting go after a long day at the keyboard. It makes me feel less like a poor man when I have cool electric guitar tones.

This is a good option for bass players, though the low end from the small included woofer is limited. It has a decent tone at lower volumes.

The recording quality is solid and it offers stereo outs. For studio sessions, I'd still reach for my Universal Audio OX and a real tube amplifier, but lead lines or single-note stuff from the Spark Mini could totally make it onto a final track. You can get an idea of what I mean by listening to a few sound samples. I'm a drummer first and I don't play the blues.

It's hard to name a guitar-playing tool that I like more. I wish it had more than eight hours of battery life, but I can't find anything not to love. If you like playing electric guitar alone, this is the way to go.