YAMAHA THR30II vs Positive Grid Spark! - Which one is the Best Practice Amp?

Hello guys, welcome back to the channel today. I have a video prepared for you that has been requested many times. We have the third

yamaha

r30 mark ii versus the

spark

. Yes, welcome back to the channel, I hope today we are having a fantastic day. Well, the emergence of the small format

practice

amp has been quite revolutionary. The value and features of these small amplifiers are unparalleled, but today we are going to try to answer the question for you: is one right for you? Now more and more companies are starting to make feature-rich, small form factor desktop amplifiers, but today we have two of the most popular ones for you, number one has to be the

yamaha

these guys started making this series 10 years ago.

A while ago they were the creators of this market so we had to include the yamaha, this is the thr-30 mark ii and secondly there is the very popular

positive

grid

spark

40. So I have a lot of criteria that we are going to set. These two amps I hope will help you decide

which

one might be right for you now. It's worth mentioning that I've done full demos of both amps, so if you want all the nitty gritty details and a bunch of different tones. that these amps can give look at those demos besides that, let's dive in real good, let's start with the form factor so you can see the physical differences between the cabinets.

Now Spark is a little taller and is also about an inch and a half. deeper but it is a little shorter, as you can see the yamaha is a little lower and wider in comparison. Now I put them both on my scale. The Spark came in at 11 pounds and the Yamaha came in at nine and a half pounds now, obviously they're both very small, very portable and very light, but those are like the physical differences, so let's start talking about overall quality. I've had both amps for a few months now and really got to know them quite well, starting with the spark here.

As you can see it looks a lot like an amp and it has kind of a nice tolex cover with some gold trim and it feels very heavy, very well made you know it doesn't feel cheap at all and it has a nice clean. Front face, so if you don't have a dedicated music room, I think this would look great in the living room anywhere. Very discreet checks on the top, so the front face is very clean and as you can see, the front fabric here hasn't sagged at all. So it holds up very well now as far as the Yamaha is concerned, as you can see it's a very different construction method.

We have metal on the front face, metal on the top with a metal carry handle now on the back on the sides. It's molded plastic, so a bit like two tails, really premium on the front, really premium on the top and a little bit cheaper on the back and sides, now molded plastic, you know, it feels very solid, it's not really cheap and soft. it feels solid but compared to the front and top it doesn't feel as good while the spark feels the same at all angles but overall i'll give the overall build award to the yamaha mainly because the knobs and controls feel more premium they just have a very nice resistance they are tall they are easy to use and feel a little better next let's compare these two in terms of versatility that's the name of the game when we're talking about power amplifiers small format, you no longer have just a clean channel and an overdrive, you have almost unlimited tones with a ton of effects on top.

Now when it comes to the spark here, well, it's unrivaled, I think the

grid

is

positive

, you know? When they're marketing, they say there are over 10,000 ringtone prints that you can download and save to your Spark, no one's going to touch it. Let's be honest, that's crazy and the app that accompanies the Spark looks as beautiful as the renderings of the pedals. and the amp heads and cabinets look beautiful, very easy to use, very easy to store in your spark, so you know that in terms of pure tones, nothing is going to touch the spark. These guys have done a phenomenal job, you know, making those tones accessible now that it comes to the Yamaha, well, it has an app to go with it and you can change the cockpit and the head etc., but it doesn't have the ecosystem like Spark, so it's more of, you know, accessing the tones. up and save it to your unit so you have more controls on the top to control the parameters while the spark here has your modulation, your delay and your verb here we have a lot more effects so you have more access to the knobs on the top top here you know it's beneficial to have the app to dial in your tones other than that I think the main feature of the yamaha is the ability to run it I don't know if you guys can see it without being plugged in so if you just want to unplug it from charge, you get many hours of use without plugging it in, so you could literally take it to res for a rehearsal without the power supply and you'd be totally fine, so I find myself using this when I don't want to

practice

in the studio.

I can just pick it up and play, so it's a very cool feature, but in terms of the overall ecosystem, Spark wins next. Let's talk about user experience, it's really important to have a clean interface that's easy to understand and to be honest these amps are pretty similar in the way they're designed. Here on the Spark, you have four different presets. You can save your tones on the Yamaha, same kind of thing, but you have five different presets. They both work very similarly. You have a rotary knob to select your tones. Clean Crunch Lead High Gain, that kind of thing.

Both have tuners. here too, the yamaha is a little better and has a more traditional tuner that will show you the note and if it's sharp or flat and a little different in the sparkle, but they both have built in tuners

which

is great, they both have gain controls , master controls, three-band EQ effects controls and you know your guitar's main output and the main audio output because with both you can use Bluetooth phones as speakers, so separate the audio outputs. Which of these apps do I think is easiest to use? Well, it's a bit of a complicated question.

If you like to connect a phone or a tablet, Spark is very easy to use and you know that accessing all the different parameters and effects is very easy if you're the type of person who likes to, you know, use physical knobs, the yamaha wins here, it has, as I mentioned, a better tuner, you have three different voices built into the front face of the amp, you know, if you want to access that kind of thing on the Spark you have to connect your tablet and your phone, so It's an interesting feature. You can immediately change the voice of your tone and learn more effects controls on the Yamaha on the Spark here, as I mentioned.

We have modulation delay and verb. We have a bunch of different effects here that you already know and it's very easy to adjust the parameter, so there's more control on the front of the Yamaha and in terms of music control, as I mentioned, they both have bluetooth. so you can play backing tracks and you know or improvise a very useful function on the yamaha we have a full size uh knob with all the functions here on the Spark it's a small knob uh I'm not a big fan of that , so in terms of you know, if you just like to use the front knobs like any amp, yamaha wins there, if you want, you know the connectivity and you know that using a tablet or a phone, Spark wins there now, while I have both amps on the desktop, we could also talk about connectivity.

Again, both amps are very similar. Both have Bluetooth. There is a small indicator on the back of the spark plug. If you are connected to Bluetooth. Both have auxiliary inputs so you know whatever type of source you want out of the speakers. Both have USB. What types of sets differ? The Yamaha also has line outputs and this is a really great feature. You have left and right stereo outputs. You can go to a mixer and out to a public address system in the front. At home you can literally run this little amp you know in huge setups just using the line out or you can just go straight to your audio interface so a little more flexibility on the Yamaha now they both have USB outputs and can be independent audio interfaces.

What a great feature, so if you don't have an audio interface you can download the drivers and record directly to your computer from the USB outputs, so the connectivity is a little better on the Yamaha because you have those line outputs, but other than that Of course, They are quite similar, so we have pointed out some of the main differences, except for the two big ones, price number one and tone number two, these are the most important ones, let's start with the tone now, when it comes to the spark in almost every video. I've used it, I say the same thing, this cabinet weighs as much as a vase, which is funny to say for something that you know is so small that you think of a 4x12 cabin or maybe a 410 basement or something as potentially heavy. heavy bass and I think I know the reason why is because when you're not playing in a band with drums, bass, keyboard, acoustic guitar and vocals, you don't need your guitar to cut through the mix in the same way as if you were playing alone in your room, that being said I still think it's too hot and not enough sweep on the EQ knobs now, maybe they can fix it as a firmware update but as it is The bass is heavy and all the clips What you hear of me using it throughout this video had the bass practically completely cut out and in my recording software more bass frequencies were removed, so that's the first thing to note about this spark. very, very warm now, secondly, when it comes to the yamaha, if you have all the knobs on 12, this thing sounds like a traditional amp, so when it comes to tone, it's naturally much brighter, it's naturally much warmer and in terms of similar precision, which one sounds more like you know a real amplifier or a traditional amplifier, uh, the yamaha for miles, and that's just because of the way it's equipped, it has a natural voice as an amp this one has a very warm natural voice and in my opinion too warm now that doesn't mean you can't get great tones out of both that doesn't mean you can't make the yamaha sound warm and you can't make the The sparks you know sound sharp and bright, but the way they have a natural voice when everything is turned out at 12 and even as I mentioned with most of the base cut and some of the mid cuts, I still find the spark a little warm, so that those are the big tonal differences now in terms of the overall volume of These two amps, well, they're very similar and they sound very loud.

These little guys can put out, we're talking 95db more, uh, without completely breaking down, which is why I say they're not just useful amps for practicing. They can be useful rehearsal amps of course, depending on the style of music you play, if you're in a metal band or a huge band they won't have the power or clarity to cut through, but if you play quiet music or they're like in a three-piece band, they can also be useful in that environment, they are louder than they seem now in terms of effects quality. I would say they are quite comparable.

The only weakness of the spark here is that I find the verbs. very huge, blooming and fuzzy, even when you pick them as a spring verb, so they don't have a really nice tight, guitar oriented spring verb, which I would like to see them, maybe update them in a firmware also in the yamaha, it is much more. natural, much more than what we are used to hearing in an amplifier, so there you have it, those are the main differences that I noticed between the overall tone now, as for the price, that is the other big difference, the spark is regularly somewhere around. 250 dollars and a lot of times it goes on sale so it's very affordable and when you know how to plug in a phone or tablet there's a lot of value here now the yamaha is about twice as much so I think it was around 450. now yamaha has a range You know, I think it's from 299 to 450, so they have some less powerful more affordable amps, but this one here because it's 30 and this is 40 that we wanted to use, you know, they like it, so there they are.

This one is a lot more expensive but it has more control on the front and it's more vocal like a traditional amp in terms of the EQ and virb and all that, and this one here is a lot more affordable and when you connect it to an app with almost unlimited tones, um, but in my experience, uh, or in my personal opinion, it requires a little more fine-tuning in terms of the EQ, taking some of the really big, snare-type bass tones, uh, going down and uh, and the verb too. It sounds very big and flourishing andstuff like that, which is great, but you don't always want that, so there you go, that's the main difference, price, tons of value here, uh, maybe requires a little more tweaking here, more expensive but with a very natural sound. out of the box, so I hope you found this video helpful.

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