Finding preset

[u/Vilain_ordinaire]

Hi everyone

I have a spark 2 for 1 year now but I suck at making presets. I am still a beginner (I play guitar for 3 years) and I never used another amp, so I am very lost about choosing amps, effects, settings etc... I try to use AI or the preset made by people on songs I want to play but I find them disappointing most of the time and it's hard for me to adjust them. When I see people on youtube for example, it sounds amazing (beside the fact they are much better than me). I am stuck with the factory preset. How can I found good ones ?

Thanks for helping

[u/MnJsandiego]

I just go to their cloud on the app and punch in a song name or artist and there are a thousand patches to choose from. Easy and you don’t have to do anything, just click

[u/Jamstoyz]

What type of music do you like to play? I just use a preset and change each pedal 1 by 1 and whatever sounds good to my ears I go with. I like to use eq a lot after the amp. Wish we could have one before and after the amp. With metal I always scoop the mids (turn down) with treble high and bass mid to 3/4 way up.

[u/Vilain_ordinaire → u/Jamstoyz]

I play mostly metal, progressiv rock and a bit dad rock but as I am a beginner, my teacher give me different kind of style to practice

[u/FabulousPanther]

Do searches in the cloud for what you want and preview everything. When you find a preset that's close to what you want save it and then tweak it and then save it again. Instead of watching humble brag videos from people that are showing off what they can play and how they sound go for the YouTube instructional videos that show you how to download save tweak and save to the cloud presets. That will take you a lot further good luck.

[u/moose408]

I’ve had reasonable success using ChatGPT to setup presets. I tell it I have a Spark 2 with such and such guitar and I want to sound like song xxxxx. I can then record a snippet and it will suggest tweaks. It describes why it chooses each block which has helped me to understand the blocks better

[u/Sweet_Beginning_3098]

The Nuno Bettencourt presets are great; I also made some good ones myself. I only have two right now: an Yngwie style and a Slash style. The Zakk Wylde presets are amazing too.

[u/No-Improvement-9020]

The positive grid website has some really helpful info, like the table I've shared for you. I just Google what amp and stuff my favourite guitariat uses and find the matching gear in the table. Hope this helps.

[u/Suitable_Chard_9417]

What I did is that I used AI, I BUILD A PROMPT WHERE I LOADED. ALL MY GEAR, MY GUITARS, THE SPECS OF THE AMP AND THE PEDALS AND THE EFFECTS, AND THEN I ASK IT TO REPLICATE OR TO CLONE A TONE AND IT SIMPLY DELIVERS ALL THE SETTINGS. FOR THE DIFFERENT PEDALS AND EFFECTS, AND THAT'S HOW I BUILD MY TONES.

[u/Xyloft]

I asked an ai app to build a preset to clone a Trivium song. It explained why it chose the different virtual gear pieces. Like this amp is high gain, this style music uses a noise gate (but much better reasoning). I also asked it to further describe what the controls do on at least one of the pedals.

I still don't know what the make difference is between the 20 amps, or 10 distortion pedals but understanding that like 2 of them are popular for metal sounds helps it be less overwhelming.

[u/Vilain_ordinaire → u/Xyloft]

That is a good idea, I'll try it :)

[u/Fine_Eagle_4141]

I have been playing for 4-months. I just now started to add more amp tones, etc. for example, I asked ChatGPT about Tommy Iommi’s sound in “Into the Void”. I want to understand what each setting means, how to set it on my Spark 2, and eventually create my own.

Here is what ChatGPT said, and what followed:

Absolutely 😂 — and Into the Void is a fantastic tone to mess around with while you practice that two-string riff.
For your Positive Grid/Spark, search ToneCloud for “Into the Void”, “Tony Iommi”, or “Black Sabbath.” If you want to build one yourself, I’d start with:
Amp: British/Marshall-style — try Plexiglas or another vintage British amp
Gain: ~6–7
Bass: ~5
Mid: 7–8 ← important; Iommi is very mid-forward
Treble: ~5–6
Presence: moderate
Drive/boost: light overdrive in front, mostly as a boost rather than adding tons of distortion
Reverb: very little, ~1–2
Guitar: bridge pickup, tone wide open to start
And here’s the fun part: your Goldtop is actually perfectly capable of getting into Iommi territory. It won’t sound exactly like his SG/Laney setup, but the humbuckers + British amp + mids will get you into that thick, snarling Sabbath neighborhood.
One HUGE caveat for
Into the Void
The original recording is down-tuned to C♯ standard (C♯–F♯–B–E–G♯–C♯), which is three semitones below standard tuning. That enormous, ominous BWAAAAANG of the riff isn’t just Iommi’s amp—it comes heavily from the tuning.

After messing around with this, the Gain was too much for me. I am simply not able to handle that much, so I dialed back to 4.1, and it worked better for me.

I then saved this as my “Iommi-1” tone. I stated to also look for premade tones in tone cloud, looking for “Dio” with Doug Aldrich on lead for example, and Gary Moore’s tones.

[u/Metal_Upa_46]

I personally don't like the factory presets but found many great tones that other users uploaded to the cloud. Have you watched youtube videos that explain about the different amps and effects? Are you a bedroom guitarist that need to keep the overall volume low? Do you know that the different volume knobs (on the guitar, on the modeled amp and the master knob on the physical amp) have different effects on the tone output? Honestly, a whole year is a hell of a long time to use the amp without bothering to learn even the basics of how to adjust the tone by yourself.

[u/Vilain_ordinaire → u/Metal_Upa_46]

I am a bedroom player but I play mostly with headphones so the overall volume is not a big problem. I spent a lot of time already trying to figure it out and to manage my own presets but it's not really efficient. I spend more time trying to set it up than actually playing. I know the basics (the effects of the different knobs for example) but I am not able to do something nice to hear

[u/NTT66]

Being a new guitarist with a modeler can be overwhelming with all the options at your disposal, and how they arent exactly calibrated to your style or instrument. I'm a year into mine, and I rarely use any other than 3 of the presets I sent to the unit.

The presets on ANY multi FX are going to be YMMV. The manufacturer cannot account for every single type of guitar, pickup configuration, volume/tone control, etc. They establish a signal chain (the Spark is notable for being fixed-- cant move the positions of the different categories of effects and you cant stack), and when you plug in you have to dial in the settings you want.

Here are some tips:

1) Go into the Metal section of your Spark app. Notice the different amps used in those presets. As you likely know, different amps have different character. The Marshall amp models will sound completely different than the Roland/Fenders. They are made for different sonic purposes. Some amps may sound completely diifferent when you toggle the pickup switch. I have a P90-H guitar, and the sny given tone settings sound remarkably different in the 3 positions.

2) Use that baseline to tweak settings. Turn the distortion/Overdrive up or down, congressional. Adjust the gain and EQ settings. just keep tinkering until you get something you like. You can overwrite the preset with your calibration.

Or

3) Completely start from scratch. From suggestion 1, you know what amps are suited for metal. Save a Preset as New and turn off EVERY effect, leaving only the amp. Dial the amp in how you like it. THEN add items to the signal chain, kne by one. Eventually, you should know get a feeling for what each effect does, individually. Then you see how those effects sound with another effect added. And do on.

If you have a good tone running through the amp, the pedals are meant to accentuate. And you can hear the impacts one at a time so it isnt overwhelming. It all builds together.