Positive Grid Spark Neo Wireless Smart Guitar Headphones review – These absolutely rock!

REVIEW – Guitar amps have continued to get smaller and while there’s nothing quite like playing through a vintage amp and 4×12 cabinet, not all of us have the space, sound-proof rooms or family that will put up with it. Positive Grid sent their Spark NEO and while using this product and writing this review I realized that guitar equipment may have been the genesis of my obsession with gadgets.

⬇︎ Jump to summary (pros/cons)
Price: $199
Where to buy: Positive Grid and Amazon

What is it?

The Spark NEO is a pair of wireless over-the-ear headphones, a diminutive, rechargeable transmitter and a smartphone app that create a combination of guitar amp, jam partner and learning tool that might just become your favorite practice gear.

What’s included?

• Spark NEO Wireless Headphones
• Spark NEO TX (Transmitter unit)
• USB-C charging cable
• Info cards

Tech specs

Design and features

The most significant thing in this photo is that there isn’t a big amp sitting in the room. All you need is your guitar, these headphones and this Spark transmitter.

The headphone cans have a color and texture resembling an amps cabinet in case you’re feeling sentimental, and in the below image you can see that full size 1/4″ jack which lets you plug in a standard guitar cable if you’re missing cords for some reason. The right ear cup is pictured here and you can see the power button (and LEDs for power and BT) as well as the USB-C charging port below the 1/4″ jack. Up on the flat are the volume buttons with an amp tone preset button between them which lets you toggle between your 4 favorite.

Long hours of practice shouldn’t be too hard with this pillowy underside of the headband.

Outside noise isn’t getting in either with these ear cups that use analog materials to keep sound out instead of ANC.

On the other ear you’ll find a toggle button for the connection to the TX unit.

Best part yet is that these headphones are good enough to replace your daily drivers and they collapse for travel. Hard to say if rotating them flat or one of these two folding scenarios is best, but seeing as they don’t come with a carrying case, you should be able to figure out which works best for you.

Assembly, Installation, Setup

Setup really couldn’t be easier. Use the included cable to charge the headphones and the TX unit individually. Power up the headphones and pair them to your smartphone in the normal process. Grab your guitar and plug the 1/4 jack of the Spark TX into your guitar.

Press and hold the power button and the TX and headphones will automatically pair together. You’re now free to start jamming! On the right side of your headphones you’ll find two volume buttons with a larger center button between them that will toggle through your presets. To unlock lots more, open the app and start playing around.

Performance

I’m going to admit that it’s been a solid year or more since I’ve picked up my guitar. Life and work kinda got in the way for a bit. I also managed to break my dominant side collarbone about a month ago, but when the Spark NEO showed up  I just had to try.

First and foremost, the headphones are seriously comfortable. They’re made with premium materials, have great cushion on the underside of the headband and memory foam earcups that isolate you from your environment that no additional noise cancellation is needed.

One thing I noticed right away is that the clamping force is a little more than your typical Sony/Sonos/Apple over-the-ear headphones. This is a good thing as you’re much more likely to get some head movement when you’re playing hard. This could result in some pressure around your ears, especially if you wear glasses. It didn’t bother me too much with my glasses with pretty flat temples, but thought it was worth mentioning.

Streamed music sounds great. Again that noise isolation is solid and doesn’t provide any of that uncanny valley feeling some of the severe ANC processes can trigger. In fact, when playing guitar through them, I was better able to hear how my guitar’s sound is affected by it’s own dials and switches than on a traditional amp.

Inside the app you’ll be prompted to connect the app to the headphones with a tap at which point you’ll arrive at the home screen (far left screenshot). It basically shows the amp and effects associated with the preset you’re currently on. Tapping on the AMP shows the next screenshot which lets you cycle through genres or “All”. Tap on any one to have it switch live in your headphones. Back on the home screen you can mess with the controls of the AMP or tap on any of the effects pedals and adjust those as well. This alone can keep you busy for hours.

Tapping on the MUSIC tab down at the bottom takes you here where you can choose a Jam where you basically have session support for drums, bass and more. Very cool.

Tapping on the mic in the lower right of the above image lets you talk to the app. In this case I said “Back in Black”. The app presented the list in the middle and when I selected the 3rd option it started up the song complete with chord charts that scroll and change in time with the song. Many more hours just re-learning songs I’ve long since forgotten.

The Video camera tab lets you record and share video, something I didn’t delve into. The pancake stack menu bottom right brings up the closest thing to a settings page where you can connect to Apple music, find saved songs, edit your profile and find both a tuner and metronome.

Now AI is touted throughout their site and app. Some of that is seen in the automatic chords that are presented when searching for music. There’s also the prominent center button in the app between the music and video logo. For the majority of my review period this was giving me a “something went wrong” error when I hit it. However today it magically started working. I’m not going to tempt the AI overlords by trying to guess why, but work it did. When you tap the icon you’re presented with a field to make a prompt, much like any AI assistant. I asked for amp tone that sounds like Rage Against the Machine, and then the same for Smoking Popes. Both pretty distinctive guitars. In both instances Spark came back with four Amp and effects presets where I could just hit the Play icon to try it out. I have to say that the AI results in seconds gave me options far closer than I would ever be able to get fiddling with knobs for hours, let alone knowing where to start. Straight up amazing. Going to have to sit down with this one for a while.

Final thoughts

Hands down, this is the best practice amp set up I’ve used. The headphones are super comfortable and the transmitter couldn’t be easier to use. I’m not annoying anyone else in the house as I clumsily learn new songs with discordant tones. There’s a ton of teaching in the app to lean on and that newly discovered AI ability to define amp tones for my favorite bands is the icing on the cake.

What I like about Spark NEO Wireless Smart Guitar Headphones

• Great set of comfortable high performance headphones
• Perfect amplifier for my purposes that doesn’t require any floor space
• Excellent app with coaching, amp modeling and AI features that need to be tried

What needs to be improved?

• Small travel pouch for headphones should be included
• A split cable would be nice for charging headphones and TX unit at the same time.

Price: $199
Where to buy: Positive Grid
Source: The sample of this product was provided for free by Positive Grid whom did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.

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