As an owner of the Spark 40, I have found it lacking. It seemed to hit all my initial desires, but the reality is that it doesn’t. It is my only guitar amp, and I use it daily, but I am also planning to replace it for Christmas. It just isn’t quite enough anymore, but at least I have a far better idea of what I want now.
- the sound is ok. Not awesome, but acceptable for home practice
- models are ok. Noticeably not as good as my Helix LT, and I rarely use anything now except the cleanest amp model with nothing before or after it. I use the Helix for any modeling now.
- the order of the effects are fixed, and you cannot double any of them
- There was no foot switch - now there is, but it is expensive for what you get.
- There is no effects loop. you can only put external effects on the input
- I have doubts about the 4-inch speaker. It seems to be ok until you compare it to a purpose-built guitar amp or cabinet with a 10 or 12 inch speaker
- the web-based features are not reliably engineered. The chord guessing algorithm is laughable.
- backups require dropbox or publicly sharing on the Positive Grid cloud.
on the good side, it is very portable. I took it on a vacation last year, and with the natural reverb in the hotel room, it sounded pretty nice. It stuffed into a bag without any trouble, and sat unobtrusively in the hotel room.
If I were in the market for a small modeling amp today, I’d give the Yamaha a better look than I did before. I already would have the Katana at the top of my list.
I prefer lots of options, so the Helix makes sense for me. Maybe a small amp head and cabinet with a handful of pedals might make sense for you, so don’t forget that idea as well.