Shredders worth their Floyd Rose whammy bars will get everything they could want or expect out of Steve Vai’s signature practice amp, The Positive Grid Spark MINI Vai. This compact, simple-to-navigate amp is sparse, sleek, attractive, and affordable (around $229). The front features Vai’s mystic mandala (featured on his Hydra guitar) as the grill of the surprisingly powerful and high-quality speaker. On top of the rectangular unit are three knobs and an input jack. And the entire amp is smaller than a six-pack.
The first knob has four “Preset” settings customized by Vai and named after his hot sauces; Fresh, Mild, Hot, and Fire. “Fresh” combines a clean, compressed tone with a light delay. “Mild” stirs in a little dirt along with modulation and is great for blues or classic rock. “Hot” is a bracing, distorted tone that works hard rock and metal rhythms, but is treated with enough echo to give the sound depth or to work with leads. “Fire” is an over-the-top setting designed for serious shredding, and treated with heavy distortion, reverb, and delay.
The volume knob is labeled “Guitar,” and the third knob, “Music,” allows the MINI Vai to be used as a Bluetooth speaker, and also enables guitarists to play along with streaming audio, MP3s, and other digital files. Played without any WIFI integration, it’s a blazing practice amp that caters to shredders, but doesn’t overlook other kinds of players who favor an instantly modulated sound. The secret hot sauce – which is hardly a secret – lies in the Positive Grid’s user-friendly Spark App download. The free app contains various practice features, the Spark AI tool, and an easily tweakable library of 33 amps and 43 effects.
This app is also the key to accessing the ToneCloud, an online reservoir featuring more than 100,000 presets programmed by the ToneCloud online community composed of Positive Grid staffers, Spark users, and contributing artists. These are free to upload/download/share with others, providing practically limitless tone options. To gain access, Spark users (of any model) just need to download the Spark App and start a free Positive Grid account.
Since most of the Spark features are accessed with a smart phone the back of the burgundy-colored MINI Vai is as uncluttered as the top controls. There’s an on button and a “Pair” button, which connects the unit directly to Bluetooth without the need for a separate adaptor (as with all Spark products). There’s also a USB C input for charging and external connections (recordings can be made on MacOS or Windows at a sample rate of 44.1kHz and a bit depth of 16 and no separate audio interface is required); an aux-in jack to connect external audio sources like smartphones, tablets, or music players, allowing guitarists to play along with their favorite tunes or use the MINI Vai as a speaker for other audio content; and a one-eighth inch headphones/line out, which enables the practice amp to connect to other gear equipped with a line-in. Also, the MINI Vai comes with exclusive Steve Vai backing tracks and loops so players can jam along with riffs from the guitar legend’s catalog.
It would be hyperbolic to say Positive Grid will render conventional stompboxes obsolete, but for non-professionals who want to explore a wide variety of tones, emulate the sounds of their favorite songs or guitarists, and/or play along to algorithms of beats and basslines that assess a player’s tempo and chord patterns and provide a sonic backdrop for jamming, the MINI Vai is all you need — and then some. Pros will find ample creative uses for the unit as well.
Of course, there’s a tuner and a metronome in the app ( Unlike the recently released Spark 2, there’s no looper), but the most ambitious element in the Spark app is the AI feature, with which players can type or use their phone mic to enter the name of a player, music genre, amp model, or song tone, and the program will offer four options to meet the user’s request. Simple searches are easily handled (“give me a blues guitar sound,” “pull up a Black Sabbath tone,” “dial in Eddie Van Halen’s brown sound”). More complex or obscure matches are less accurately summoned (“I want the guitar sound of Dixie Dregs’ ‘Night of the Living Dregs,’” “recreate Marty Friedman’s guitar tone in Cacophony,” “conjure the atmospheres Allan Holdsworth used on “Tokyo Dream”). However, the AI tool can analyze the user’s playing style and recommend complementary tones and settings – a feature that launches the interactivity function to another level.
Though its abilities are complex and multifaceted, all the features on the Spark App are simple to navigate, making it easy to dial in just the right tone. And, once you’ve found a sound you like, you can instantly save it to the app as a preset. If you don’t like the MINI Vai’s four custom presets, they’re easy to replace. Or, say you love the overloaded “Fire” setting, but it’s got a little too much echo for you. No problem. Visit the Spark App setting for the MINI Vai presets and shorten the delay or get rid of it entirely. If you want to return to the original presets later, click the factory reset and you’re back where you started.
On a clean Spark App setting, the amp works great with your own effect pedals, and handles a multi-stompbox signal chain as well as your favorite tube amp. Or, you can get creative by combining your physical pedals with heavily or lightly modulated app settings. Only players who hate using a smartphone with their guitar, or don’t know the difference between a text and an email and are afraid to learn, should steer clear of the Spark MINI Vai.
Even if you only use some of the functions on Spark App, the MINI Vai sounds better than many comparably priced practice amps. For 10 watts, the volume is abundant, and while it might not hold up to fully miked drums, connecting the line out jack to the line in of a more powerful amp enables players all of the functionality of the MINI Vai and as much power as a second amp will allow.
For guitarists who want a bigger, more powerful, and slightly more versatile Spark amp for home and onstage use, the 50-watt Spark 2 (priced around $279) might be the better choice of the two great new Spark products. It has all the features of the original Spark, the AI versatility of the MINI, and a looper. But if size is a factor and a practice amp is what you’re looking for, and you want to shred like a beast and pluck like a sensitive artist in the privacy of your home, backstage room, or practice space, we can’t recommend the Spark MINI Vai highly enough.
Watch Dave From Double D Guitar Unbox and Wail on the Spark MINI Vai
I have got to check out this AI feature! I haven’t yet, but will asap. Oh and thanks a ton for sharing my video, here!!
Oh so cool. Worth every penny, by the sounds of it.👍