TC Electronic SPARK BOOSTER Awesome Booster Pedal with Gain Control and Active EQ

Things you might not know from reading the description and other reviews: * 100% transparent unity gain. Gain all the way down; switch clean; level 12:00; bass 12:00; treble 12:00. Set your amp how you like and play while toggling the footswitch. You CANNOT hear the difference in gain or EQ. NO dirt, NO EQ change, NO level change. IMO, this is the difference between a good boost and a great one. * Level: Off is Off. When you set it up for unity gain with Level at 12:00, 26dB level boost is from 12 to 5:00. Level cut is from 12:00 CCW down to 7:00. When Level is at minimum, no signal is passed, regardless of the settings of other controls. That means in addition to all the boost options, you can do any kind of volume preset with this pedal, higher or lower, with or without gain or EQ. If you like to set your amp for lead tone with your guitar all out, and roll back volume for rhythm, you can set a lower rhythm volume on the spark and do it with your foot. Being able to go from -inf to +26dB is again, the difference between a good boost and a great one. * How Much Hair? What can you get from the gain control? Everything a stock BOSS SD-1 can do. I A/B'd them. If you dime an SD-1, you can get a dead-on match from the Spark into a clean amp. To my ears, it was Gain 3:00, switch mid, level 3:00, bass 9:00, treble 3:00. So it's not "just a little breakup". The pedal is misnamed. Its not a booster, it's a Boost/OD. * EQ, and the secret switch. No joke. If you put the EQ knobs to 12:00 and the switch to clean, there is no EQ change. Adding gain does change the EQ, because the gain has more low mids than the no-gain signal. The EQ knobs are boost/cut, but less than you expect, +/- 6 or 8dB instead of the typical 12 or 15. To get more radical EQ, use fat switch to get more lows (300-600Hz to my ears) and mid to get more highs (800-1200Hz -ish). Because an EQ boost also raises the level, going from clean to mid or fat increases the dirt as well as changing the tone. So when looking for a sound, start in the clean setting, and play with gain, level and EQ. If you need a little more, hit the mid switch. or use fat to make a thick commanding tone. * OD vs. Distortion. This pedal is absolutely an overdrive. You can get OD from the gain control with level at any setting, from driving your amp's preamp circuit and high Level, or both. And you can get it with or without a tube screamer-style mid hump by using the mid switch. But it is not a distortion pedal. if you want to understand the difference between OD and distortion, plug the spark into a clean amp, and try different settings. Everything you get from it will be OD, and none of it will be distortion. However, you CAN get distortion with a spark by using it in front of an amp set to crunch, or an OD pedal that already has some saturation dialed in. IMO, this is a gain stacking swiss army knife. Try it before or after any gain stage you've got. In summary, the Spark is: 1. A completely transparent unity gain buffer 2. A completely transparent 26dB gain boost 3. A completely transparent gain cut, down to -inf 4. A full featured overdrive with or without TS mid hump 5 A full-featured Hi-z preamp with both subtle and major EQ shifts on tap, and variable dirt. 6. An endless source of amusement for gain-stackers. The only reason not to buy one is because you bought two.

This is a very good boost pedal but also serves as a light overdrive. You have a lot of tone shaping capabilities. You have a volume, drive, bass, and treble knobs. The switch has a fat, clean, and midrange setting. In the clean mode, you get just a bit of drive, but when you switch to the fat or mid settings then the amount of drive you can get increases substantially. The pedal is well calibrated because even in either of these settings, you can still go to a completely clean boost. The tone of the pedal is very good as well. It is very transparent, if you want it to be, and has no weird artifacts or brittleness. It is a very smooth, nice sounding pedal. While you can use this for a drive pedal if you are the kind of player who likes the natural sound of an amp overdriving, you cannot use this as a full on drive pedal. There is more than enough drive for me, but I know that it won't be enough for people who would normally crank a TubeScreamer up past more than a third of the way. You can see that the engineers thought this pedal out well with little things like putting in one big screw at the bottom that opens the full plate to access the battery that can be opened with a coin, and while the screw can be separated from the plate, it has a clever design so that it won't come off unless you intentionally do so. The pedal was a/b-ed with a Fulltone Fatboost pedal and a Lovepedal Eternity and the tone was either a pinch better or almost comparable, respectively. The Spark Booster has much greater tone shaping capabilities than either of these two. Construction seems good but I did not open up the board, and only time will tell how it holds up. The last added bonus is that this pedal, while engineered in Denmark, I believe, is made in Thailand were quality control and standards of workmanship are much higher than those of China, where everything seems to have one problem or another. Of course, made in the USA is better, as the other two pedals are. My only complaint is that I don't really like the color schemes and graphic design. It's a bit too virginal and bright. It reminds me of the old rock band Angel, and would fit in well on the alter of a church, but that's just me. Since they are using the graphic of a spark plug, they should have come up with something that evokes racing cars or fire, with a nice candy apple red or something but, oh well, can't have everything.

I recently purchased my first all-tube amp, the Vox AC4C1-12. I really just play at home, so I wanted something small, with low enough wattage that I could practice in my basement without going deaf. I subsequently learned two truths about valve amps: 1) To get a decent tone, you need to turn up the volume. 2) Even a 4 watt tube amp is LOUD when cranked. Enter the Spark. I first became aware of it thanks to the YouTube videos of Rob Chapman and Lee Anderton (Chappers and the Captain), who claimed that if your amp was missing that certain something, this pedal could add it. I researched the pedal and read a lot of great reviews. I was particularly interested in the clean boost, thinking it might allow me to get a decent tone out of my Vox while keeping the volume at a reasonable level, and it does exactly that. The mid and fat modes are great as well. The mid setting gives a nice lead boost, while the fat mode is great for adding some bass to my Strat and to help balance out the Vox's chimey top end. Overall, I can't recommend this pedal enough. It's deceptively versatile, and especially for the price, it can't be beat.

This is a very versatile boost and light gain pedal. I love it because it doesn’t raise the noise floor at all like when I use my compressor as a boost. It also just generally makes my tone sound really clean, shimmery, and snappy. Sizzly and bell-like tones are equally achievable in my use of it so far. I’ve used it so far with my telecaster mostly. It works great in conjunction with my compressor too, allowing me to get that effect without having to turn the compressor level up and get that white hiss. It also jives great before or after overdrive. It can be an overdrive by itself too, a very fine-grained one, and the eg and mode switch makes it very versatile. You can really sculpt timbres out of it that help it poke out or blend in various ways, and it gooses all effects down the line in a pleasant way. If you use a passive pickup on your acoustic like I do, it is great for bringing the level up to nestle in a mix without as much noise as a turned up eq pedal might. Sturdy construction too, and it is also great on bass as others have pointed out. A great buy at well under a Benjamin.

Nice boost and light distortion with higher drive setting. This is a cleaner drive for classic rock,blues,jazz. I like it because you can add punch without getting into total distorted breakup. I would not call this a distortion pedal, but a nice drive. Nicely priced

i use this boost in front of a quilter us block analog head with a fender strat. i wanted something to round off/polish my tone and this does the job. there is no coloration of tone and the knobs give you plenty of control. i like keeping the boost on all time and this pedal allows me to use my guitar volume and tone knobs to get more control over the tone coming out of the quilter. ive also used the xotic rc booster, but that was on a humbucker guitar. the rc and tc accomplish the same thing. more clarity, body and polish to the tone. the tc is a better value than rc. im also have the tc ir impulse pedal after the quilter for speaker simulation. using the tc spark, quilter us, and tc ir, I have a real good ampless setup that allows me to go straight into the pa system.

This pedal is absolutely amazing. After searching around hopelessly for a good low-gain overdrive, I saw somebody recommend this on a forum discussion. I never would have given a booster pedal consideration otherwise. After looking at a couple demo videos online, this thing immediately went in my amazon cart. I play through pedals into a Roland keyboard amp (I'm mostly a keyboard player) but have always wished I could afford a really nice tube amp. Not anymore. I won't say it makes my set-up sound exactly like a tube amp, but I will absolutely say that, to me, it sounds every bit as good thanks to this pedal. With the switch set to "clean" and gain cranked, you get just a beautiful shimmer to your tone that opens up to a tiny bit of breakup when you really dig in hard - almost reminds me of a vibrolux. Switch it to "mid" and you get some more hair, a bit like a tube screamer with the gain set low. When you switch it to "fat", you get some of the best bluesy crunch to ever not come from vacuum tubes, and the gain knob will give you audible breakup turned anywhere past noon. Your mileage may vary of course depending on how hot your pickups are (I'm using Seymour Duncan 1/4 pound single coils). Be aware that this pedal may not sound the best when used with distortion pedals if you're taking advantage of the gain knob. When I play through this and my ProCo RAT, there seems to be some sort of faint dissonance caused by clashing overtones, so I'll end up using an A/B switch or trade in the RAT for something that agrees with this pedal more. Other than that, my single solitary complaint is that the 3-way switch is awfully close to the gain and level knobs, and with my chunky grabbers it takes surgical precision not to turn knobs while flipping the switch.

Most places where youd buy this online it’s listed at $130 plus tax or 100 plus 20 dollar shipping and I’d say at that price it’s worth it but for the $80 this is listed at rn it’s a steal. The best things about this boost pedal are that it can be super clean even while giving a huge boost and that’s it’s 3 boosts in 1. Standard mode is very clean but the gain cranked can deliver something that’ll push your drive into some really good breakup. I have a bb9 bottom booster but the fat mode on the spark does it just as well if not better as any gain on the bb9 breaks the signal and I usually have to leave the gain off whereas here a bit of gain doesn’t dirty the signal so much as just reinforce it a bit if needed. I don’t see myself using mid mode much as the type of music I play rarely call for a mid scoop but if you were a metal type player or any type of music where u want that scoop in your metal pedal I’d recommend this and something decent and avoid the metal muff(had one, could never dial it in to something I really liked) and grab a this and a JOyo Uzi instead. The build is good tho I’ve never been a huge fan of the knobs of most tc pedals this one included as I find they’re big, flatish, and don’t have a ton of turn resistance so can easily be moved by accident as is the case with this one but to TCs credit they did make a mid groove in the pedal for your eq knobs to settle in if u just wanna leave em at level. At the standard 130 price I’d shop around and make sure this is the boost pedal for you as you really may be better off with an echo Plex for a bit less if you want that sound and don’t wanna worry about 4 knobs and 3 toggles but at this price I’d say do it immediately as you may never get a shot at a new one for this price again anytime soon.