TC Electronic Spark Booster Pedal Reviews

I really like it. The fat setting deepens up the boost in a unique way. The option to add some gain and shape treble and bass is also nice. But you can also use it as a straight up clean boost if you wanted to. Price was right also. Very happy with it.

I have two problems I am always trying to address in my rig. Balancing mismatched output levels from different guitars and adding warmth to clean towns. This pedal seems to be able to address both issues very well at an amazing price. The clean boost does exactly what you expect but that phat and mid boost settings really warm up the guitar. The gain has a really nice low gain overdrive sound. It juices overdrive pedals downstream really well. This pedal just makes stuff sound better. I think every rig would benefit from it. The mini Sparks are great too.

I just wanted a clean boost with no tonal coloring when I play an instrumental tune live. It can do that plus much more. The pedal has way more volume than I need. I had to dial the gain way back to keep it clean. Does exactly what I hoped for.

This pedal is a necessity for the serious bassist. I always use a compressor, but this limits my dynamic range. The Spark pedal allows me to add the dynamic boost I require whenever I need it. It has more than enough headroom for any application.

The Spark Boost pedal will give you the Clarity, Strong Gain, and Fat to super Phat sounds, your Amp or Amps and pedals may need. Your Guitar will sing Loud and Powerfully Proud. You can have a Telecaster with Humbuckers or Single Coil,.. loaded Strat,… and Cut through any Band Stand or Mix. Don't Sleep on this treasure of a Guitar Pedal. The Bass, Gain and Treble really has the Control your looking for in your Creative Pursuit!

I'm super happy with this pedal! It pushes the front of my Hot Rod Deluxe to sonic bliss. If you're looking for a pedal that gives you nice drive without being over the top, I'd recommend it highly. Thanks to my sales engineer, Andy Rice. Always a pleasure!

Perfect pedal for the slight gain boost before an overdrive. Extremely versatile.

All I wanted to do was slightly boost and fatten my signal for soloing in a jazz context with an archtop guitar. I set the guitar and amp for a good chordal sound and then dialed in just a slight bit of extra level and girth for soloing. It works exactly as I had hoped it would without adding any noise or unwanted coloration. No more riding the guitar's tone and volume knobs!

I needed a booster pedal to cut through the mix when needed and this does the trick. Also has a bit of a crunch on it's own that gives a bit of breakup in the "fat" mode with the gain turned up.

Has been working great for me. When we play in a group acoustically I put the volume of the amp where it is very low not to over shadow anyone and when it comes to the lead I get a little boost. The gain, bass and treble adjustments allow for some fine tuning of sound. Well built little gadget. I would look at other TC Electronics peddles if I had the need.

All I wanted was a clean boost for solos, and went through a few pedals in my search. This one does the trick. It doesn't color my tone beyond adding a little muscle and volume. Just what I was looking for.

I find the TC Electronics Spark Booster to be an excellent preamp style pedal because...
- clear strong sound
- excellent bass and treble tone-shaping EQ with a well chosen (but not adjustable) center frequency
- lots of output level available for overdriving the front end of a tube amp (I can't speak to solid state amps)
- a very nice amount of gain available for adding some distortion to your sound
- three essential selectable tone styles - clean, middy, and fat.
- it can run on an internal 9-volt battery (with easy access to the battery)
- I really like the clean look of the pedal (white, gold lettering)
It is a full size pedal, but is low profile. I had the Spark Mini pedal first, but upgraded to this for the added control.
It can sound a bit clinical or cold, but that is remedied by running an EP style pedal in front of it. The Spark allows you to correct the baked in EQ of the warm sounding EP.

This pedal pushed my amp into spankville at super low volumes! I can perfectly dial in and "wake up" my combo thanks to the tone controls TC added. The pedal has no noise floor even when it's cooking. Super clean and sparkly/glassy, to pushed, to tube amp nitro hot rodded tear the wood pile down atom splitting speaker torture. SO MUCH HEADROOM!!!!

This pedal is a great upgrade to my pedal board , very versatile with a wide range sounds for every thing from blue and blues rock, to rock and soul, it has plenty of clean head room for chords and clean leads, and plenty of grit when needed, I would highly recommend this boost pedal

Honestly, it is insane that TC can offer this pedal with the quality of construction it has, the incredibly practical design layout it has.

True Bypass, independent Bass and Treble controls, a Fat setting for single coils, Clean setting for solo boosts, or Mid setting for say Strats or Metal music... so so smart. And an independent Gain knob that is distinctly different from an OD pedal, but gives the boost just enough push to really dirty up your signal is ingenious.

I love the Spark Booster. My #1 recommendation to anyone needing a boost.

The Spark pedal delivers powerful gain & increased volume when needed. A very valuable addition for a remarkably good price. Sweetwater is the best place for online musical devices.

I tried this first into 5f6 bassman 4x10. Two 5881's and 4 P10Q's. Love the mid position.
It turns is into a Marshall type grind. And with natural compression. Works great cutting the harsh sounds of 5881's
Highly recommend to those use like a little compression with their boost.
A/B with MXR duke of tone
It has its own thing going.
I'd recommend Duke of tune to El34 users and this pedal with 6L6 amps.

II


I really like this pedal David Mikautadze recommended it does what its suppose to thanks David

Perfect set up for boosting leads, clean or overdrive

I've tried numerous overdrive and distortion pedals over the years trying to get the sound of my fully cranked tube amps at a reasonable level...only problem is after adding a pedal, it didn't sound like my amp anymore...well this Spark Booster allows my Blackstar Amps (Artist 30 & Artisan 30)to have that fully cranked tone at a reasonable level and it still sounds exactly like my amps which are great blues amps even without any pedals...fat, mid or clean settings all sound great....this pedal just adds something a little special to a tube amp....hope this info helps.

Thanks sweetwater again!! Great service and fast shipping thanks again.

Just makes everything sound better.

The single-knob version of this pedal is fine for getting a reaction out of an amplifier that is already close to break-up. Having a pair of active tone controls really helps shape the sound. The first test was using this pedal in front of a TC Electronics tone print head and a 1x10 cabinet. This pedal puts the signal into active territory with headroom to spare. A slight boost to both tone controls adds the air and thickness of a mid-scoop. Press the foot switch, instant results that can be subtle or noticeable.

By itself, the drive isn't much of a tone with the toggle in the center position. Setting it to Mid or Bass gives it two different characters where the drive knob does more. The Mid toggle is aimed at guitars but it can do some nice grit when stacked with an overdrive/distortion/fuzz pedal. I used a transparent PA system to try the Boost before and after a ProCo Rat pedal and found it has the best result for bass before the distortion. It still gave up too much bottom end.

A guitar plugged into the PA though the Spark and Rat had some raging tones that saved the Rat from the chopping block. As a last chance for the Rat + Spark on bass, I ran those pedals into a Darkglass VMT 900 W head and DG 2x12 cab. It took some fearless twisting of various knobs but I was able to get some air movement along with the hairy distortion. Unfortunately, that was too much input signal for the head and it went into thermal shut-down; not sure if I permanently damaged the amp with this test but it seems so.

Last thing was using a pair of Fender Rumble combo amps with the Spark drive. Those two have a good clean tone and a two-knob OD circuit that could really appreciate the boost pedal's influence. This seems like the best application. My gear is all solid state these days and this pedal helps add a splash of character to the various signal chains. A little more lively top end on the guitar or reducing the ice-pick to the ears sensation of new round-wound bass strings are both potential benefits of this pedal.

Absolutely love this pedal and it provides so much more ability to shape tone with any guitar using just about any amplifier. If you loop rhythm tracks and want a simple boost and frequency tweak for leads, this Little Beast will more than satisfy. I use it at varying levels most all the time and it works really well in combo with an EQ and other pedals too. Well worth the money on this choice!

This is an outstanding booster pedal. Easy to use, to get what I need, and it sounds great. I have a Katana MK2 amp and multi-effects pedals, but this is now one of my essential pedals.

This little guy is so awesome! Made my amps come to life playing with this. And for the price you absolutely can't beat it for the price.

Highly recommend

This is what every guitar player needs. Words can not describe what it does for your rig. Hearing is believing and that's why you can't go wrong for the price. Give it a try. Best of wishes

I had the basic Spark Booster and it was great for its simplicity and clean boost. But the bigger Spark with tone and gain additions works well with other pedals to add additional tone. This is a keeper.

I was looking for a pedal that added a little clarity, definition and growl on my sound, I tried a DI pedal + distortion and had to return it since the distortion was too moody and overpowering, it over-colored my sound and it was very noisy, I discovered that I don't really like distortion on my bass sound.

Then I came across the spark and sounded like a good idea.

I couldn't be happier, the boost is super handy, the tone shaping is also really good and the gain adds that grit that makes you stand out without the coloring of a fuzz or distortion.

The gain adds edge that with the tone controls can go a long way to make your bass cut-thru but not at the cost of loosing bottom end, I was stuck in the idea of the blend knob that many distortion/fuzz/overdrive pedals have but with the Spark you don't need it, the tone knobs helps with that.

My chain is compressor, pre-amp pedal and the spark, and it can do anything I want. My G&L tribute L2500 has already a ton of sounds and all of them are affected equally since the boost is super clear and very low to no noise (even maxing my practice amp volume, the added noise is pretty manageable if you want dead quiet a noise gate will work effortlessly)

And if you add to all that you still have the Fat/Clean/Mis switch, I think many of you will find a very useful sound out of this pedal.

I bought the tc electronic boost pedal to fatten up the tone of single coil pickups. It does that marvelously. But there's another benefit to this particular pedal I didn't see coming. All four of my tube combo amps have two channels. However three of them have a global EQ which means that whatever tone I set for treble, middle, and bass on one channel is the same for the other channel. Since the Spark Booster has the added feature of two additional knobs that accentuate or attenuate treble and bass, you can overcome this global EQ issue. Once you've determined the optimal tone (for you) of a specific guitar into a specific amp, you can set the Spark Booster up in such a way that going from clean to overdrive (or vice versa) really nails the tone you want with the flip of a switch. Switching the cable coming out of the pedal from one amp to another and you should be golden with just a simple tweak of the Spark Boost knobs and/or dip switch. Just remember to set up your desired tone on the guitar and amp first without the use of any pedals. My Sweetwater Sales Engineer, Kris Eckman, is GREAT and always tolerates me when I call. Even when I go off script!

I'm new to using pedals but this boost has been great when I switch to finger style and need more punch.

I just got this pedal so I'm going off my new pedal high but I put this in front of a Marshall Dsl20 head and it was amazing! Gave me all the thickness and needed gain I was hoping for. I had tried a super overdrive and ts9 and they provided their own individual characteristics and are great, but this was just what I was looking for in my head. I have it set with Bass at 10 o'clock, treble at 2 oclock, gain at 10 and volume at 2 and the toggle is on the mids position. Great clarity when playing chords and sounds great on lead as well. For this price, just get it dude.

This is a great little boost pedal at an amazing price. I'm currently using this as a clean boost with the gain rolled back and the switch set to 'clean'. Perfect for the extra little clean solo push to get me above a wailing band.

I bought this to complement the Dark Magic pedal. I like it even better; if I can have only one on my board, it'll probably be the Spark.

I use TC Electronic Spark Booster mainly for recording my Fender Strat. The guitar signal is relatively weak, but with this pedal I can clean boost it so that recording it through a PreSonus Audiobox USB96 does not present any noise issue. I love it. Excellent value for money, and as always, outstanding customer service from Sweetwater folks, especially Chris Lewis.

This pedal is incredible. It makes everything sound better.

All I wanted was a completely clean boost pedal. This is it and much more! Really adds some life to my strat on a clean setting. The Fat and Mid options sound great for leads too. I also tried it in an effects loop - the fat and mid settings get a little muddy then, but the clean really does a good job of just upping the volume of the tone you already have from the input. The mini version looks cool if you need board space, but I'm glad I spent the extra $ for this more versatile one.

This pedal is what my rig needed years ago.I perform with a American tele and 2 by 12 hot rod Deville and could never get the sound I wanted . I keep this pedal first and always on, it gives a clean distorted sound on my dirt channel and a boosted clean sound on my clean channel. I now can keep my gain down on the dirty channel and my rig is now quiet. This pedal is very quiet. Thanks for the great service and price at Sweetwater.

I seem to have a boost pedal addiction lately and now use tube, preamp, edge of breakup OD, and now not one but 2 TC Sparks as "clean boosts"! I bought the Spark mini (now used at the end of chain for solo or momentary volume bump) , and then because I like extra knobs to turn, bought this one to use near the beginning. I don't use the Fat/Mid boost much even though I play mostly Strats (leave on Clean), and the Gain is kept low, but I love having the Level/Bass/Treble knobs to quickly adjust between guitars and can largely leave my amp setttings untouched. I feel that most good boosts seem to add a nice tonal quality to the sound, even if they are set to clean/unity, and this one is no exception. This one is very handy and I will use it on my small travel board (it may even take my trusty Boss GE-7 eq's spot!!), not just in my extended "fun home practice" selection. If I had to pick one and didn't need the Momentary feature of the Mini, I would pick this one just because of the Bass and Treble controls. TC makes great stuff, and I like the soft touch buttons. This is a great pedal to add to the arsenal, even if it was higher priced. Thanks to James and Sweetwater as always!

I've got a lot of distortion/overdrive/fuzz pedals. I've tried using some of them as clean boosts and even had a Fulltone clean boost for a while. None of them really gave me what I was looking for.

This pedal is delightfully versatile and easy to adjust.
It's got a very clean tone that can be fattened or have the mods boosted with the flick of a switch. You can also add overdrive with the gain knob. The EQ knobs are really handy.

I love this thing more than expected. One of the least expensive pedals on my board and also one of the best.

Couldn't be happier with this pedal. I use it as an almost always on thickener at the front of my signal chain. With the gain pushed and the level rolled back to just above unity, it adds some beautiful harmonic richness and a nice full low-end for my teles. It even adds a really subtle, pleasing compression with these settings. Very subtle, but enough to take the edge off of things without anything feeling squashed.

The tone shaping ability with the two band active EQ is phenomenal.

For the price, this can't really be beat. It's a sleeper agent and well worth your attention. On a pedalboard full of much more expensive items, this is the one that I find myself using the most. Any combination that I use will inevitably feature this boost as it just adds something special.

TC Electronic Spark Booster Pedal is a valuable tone tool, and an incredible value!

Wonderful device

I bought the boost pedal for playing at home. At low amp volume it produces a warm, rich sound that I could not obtain before.

The TC Electronic Spark Booster is a great pedal. Having seen the pedal in so many boards I was always intrigued by it and wanted to check it out for many years. Boy was I amazed by how amazing it actually is. I run it in front of my drives with the fat boost (since I have a Strat) and I absolutely love it. Fattens my tone while adding some girth. For the price it's a wonderful addition to your arsenal. If you don't own a boost pedal and want to check one out, it's a great way to start. You won't be disappointed!

Sounds great on bass. Between boosting the clean signal, slightly fattening it up, mild distortion , evening out the frequencies quickly in a in a weird room and/or local backline at the end of your effects chain, it can do so much stuff. For the money, it's a steal.

Just got this and I love it. Flexible EQ, plus the addition of a gain control means I can bring out more of my Marshall's natural break up without going full-on overdrive. Fat switch helps beef up single coils, treble knob helps brighten your sound, which is great if your neck pickup is a little too dark. The bass and treble knobs have a notch at 0, so no guess work needed. Not a bad thing to say about it. And oh yeah, it's super affordable.

I used the Spark live with my Marshall DSL40 and it didn't in any way color the tone, only enhance it with no extraneous noise added..not something I'd leave on all the time, but nice to have on hand for occasonal coloring...

Sounds Great... even maxed out. I really am glad I chose the model with the extra knobs. I liked the looks of the smaller Spark with a single knob, but this one seems to push it a little further over the edge. I have a Vox AC30CH head and wanted more gain. Turns out it was great for this. You get a lot of gain with this little device. Surprisingly it sounded a little better on the Normal Channel than the Top Boost channel. I didn't expect that. Also with the AC30CH's built in attenuator engaged, I noticed a lot of unwanted guitar noise. I eventually fixed this by playing at low volumes in 30 watt mode, which seemed to be a pretty good solution. Another thing that helped was the addition of a noise suppressor pedal like the Boss NS-2 or ISP Decimator II G String. I am able to again play with the attenuator engaged with little to no noise.

Removed my Greer Lightspeed from my board to have this as my main overdrive pedal. It says a lot for such crazy idea but trust me, this pedal sounds just as good as any overdrive pedal out there. The EQ and voice settings are the ticket on the this pefal. You can use as EQ, clean boost, overdrive... you name it.
I don't use much drive/gain in my mix and for the money it doesn't get any better than this.

I've probably tested out 20-30 boost pedals over my lifetime and I always come back to the Spark. The Spark Mini is still the best bang for the buck of all the mini boost pedals out there. This larger version gives you that extra functionality to adjust EQ settings - cutting bass or treble (and vice versa) that make it worth the extra $. Just awesome!

TC ELECTRONIC SPARK BOOSTER PEDAL.This booster pedal has more than one use.
3 settings switch,Bass and treble EQ,
the Level knob by itself.
It's like buying an overdrive pedal too.
Can by used in front of distortion for more distortion, or after a distrotion pedal for a clean boost.
GREAT pedal GREAT price. Can even have two, one to change your overall guitar sound and the other for your solo part.
SUPER pedal!!!
Also very good sales engineer always wanting to help Justin Dunn,(THANK YOU Justin)

Great pedal with lots of flexibility. Works well in front of overdrive pedals or pushing the front end of an amp to boost for leads of to add some grit!

It's not only a gray boost but is a great 1st gain stage as the drive goes from 100% clean to lite overdrive. The 3 way switch with the cut/boost treble and bass make it fit any rig. So any amp any guitar any type of pickup.

This pedal has a huge following among bass players who need a warm tube sound from their solid state amps. The Gain knob works in very gradual increments, making it easy to get a vintage tube growl. Kudos to Todd Cotten at Sweetwater for arranging the crazy-fast delivery!

If you are looking for a clean booster that can get some gain also this is it.
It does not color your sound one bit.

What a great pedal. Feels like the amp just got new life with an extra gain stage. Sign of a really good pedal, when you turn it off and wonder where your tone went. Plus options make it real versatile. Want more or less gain in the boost, yup. switches to fatten or clean up. Yup. Tweak the eq a little, also yup.

Brilliantly clean boost to tastefully gritty OD that can be easily tone tailored to any amp with active high/low and switchable mids. This is the definitive example of an always ON pedal, the amp you loved before (especially tube) quickly becomes dull without it. Adds or brings out a difficult to describe liveliness to your sound, even through other boxes like an EHX Ram's Head Big Muff. It instantly displaced and far eclipsed another well respected brand's OD I was "pushing" with.

This has been in the toolbox for some years now. Since I get all my drive on stage from hand wired tube amps, didn't have much need - but found it excellent for pushing the front of my amps in the studio without sounding like synthetic distortion or overdrive. Discovered by accident that with the gain and level knobs off, it muted the signal. Now I do use it live as a secondary hands free volume control on clean with gain off and level around 9 o'clock. Tried several other pedals that were supposed to do that, which robbed the treble and sucked all the harmonic overtones out of my sound. This pedal not only doesn't do that, but allows me to further tailor the reduced volume with tone controls. Permanent fixture on my pedalboard now. Great tool.

What a great pedal. It's simple to use, but offers quite a bit of variety. I use it as an "always-on" boost on "fat mode" when I play my tele to give my low-output single-coils a little extra heft. I use it on "mid" with the treble cranked with my double humbuckers and my Vox normal channel for a Rangemaster-style crunch tone. I also use it as a general purpose EQ balancer in neutral mode if I want to shave off some lows or boost some highs after I get my other drive pedals set. The "mid" mode also works great as a less compressed and more versatile substitute for throwing a TubeScreamer in front of a driven amp.

It works anywhere in my pedal chain from first to last depending on what I want to use it for. The gain even sounds good, though I typically leave it all the way off and just use the volume and EQ knobs and switches. I've played some other more expensive boosters and I don't feel like I'm missing anything at all with this pedal. If you already like your amp, your drive pedals, and your guitars, this will help you get even more out of them.

Bought the demo and the only way I could tell was by the sticker Sweetwater had on the box. This thing works WELL! This is the first true boost pedal I have owned, I have several OD's that I have use for boost. Now my OD's are OD's and this is the only boost I will ever need. The Fat/Clean/Mid switch does exactly what you would want. Fat gives you the girth in the lows and low mids and sounds great with singles and hums. The Clean can take the character of you guitar to another level by adding that push. The Mid gives you SRV with ease. EQ control with bass and treble will let you dial in anything you want for any genre. Adding grit, which is not a great deal but I would say just right even when dimed, is a really cool feature of this pedal. You can use a clean amp, select Fat, dime the gain and bump the signal a bit and you have an awesome blues tone on a Strat. I have one word to describe this boost....UNBELIEVABLE! It is worth the price and more and built like a tank so you only need one and this is the only boost I will ever need.

This pedal blew me away when I tried a friends out. It is so transparent but so good! Most boosts don't work well for a clean channel. Just a crunch or lead. This though works perfectly on everything! Don't sleep on this!

I've been on a quest lately to lower the noise floor as much as possible with my rig. I got rid of a lot of pedals in the process, and even a couple of amps and guitars. Now I am in the process of adding things back that I need. One of those was a clean boost. As with all the TC Electronic pedals I've had in the past, this one is pretty quiet in the chain. It boosts, it allows for some selective tone tweaking, and I'm keeping it. There isn't much to say about it. It's a clean boost. I stick with the sorts of tones you find in Surf music, so I haven't used it for heavy gain modes, just a little push. Can't say anything bad about it and the price is reasonable. I use Carr Sportsman and Tone King Falcon amps so no effects loop involved. It sits in front of the amp and does what it was designed to do.

I have tried tons of mid range $ overdrive pedals for the last few years. Nothing added to my micro dark terror, 12 inch panama cab. Everything just sounded fake, even the ts9. Here i go and get a boost pedal instead of an overdrive and this thing is awesome. I able to keep the great sounding orange gain but add to it with this bad boy. You can really dial in this pedal. Inam able to go from "gaslight anthem" to "every time i die"

This pedal is fully legit. So very versatile, especially for the price. But it. U will love it

I"m new to using a boost and I coupled this with my TC Mojomojo pedal. The pedal exceeded my expectations. The voicing switch gives great tone options along with the eq and gain. Great clarity in tone with plenty of adjustments to dial it in. I now have 4 pedals on my board and they are all TC Electronic.

Great tttttttttt

Man o man, o man!!! Just pure awesomeness.

I have the TC Electronic, Spark Booster now....& absolutely love it!! I'm glad I bought the full size version. It's definitely worth the extra money.

I had it in clean mode on the toggle switch, & the 1st thing I thought was---how did ever play without this pedal!!? It REALLY makes my amp sound so much better. I usually play through a Roland Cube 80X Amp.

Then today, I thought I'd try the mid setting on the toggle switch. WOWW!! I had a smile from ear to ear. It REALLY brings out the very best in everything. It almost sounds like a great tube amp now--very close!! Best purchase I've made in ages.

It gives added punch, big time....& I can control how much punch I want at the time. I swear I have better string separation now. Better overall tone & sound, period. More than happy with this pedal. I keep it on, always! The other reviews definitely are not hype. This pedal does just what I've read from other reviews here.

The tone controls come in very handy too. The toggle switch is a great idea. I use the clean setting & the mid setting. I think I will keep it on the mid setting most of the time.

This pedal, just sounds SO INCREDIBLY GREAT!! This is my 3rd TC Electronic pedal. I wanted TRUE BYPASS, for all of my pedals. I had been using mainly Boss pedals, but they aren't True Bypass.

I'm very impressed with this company. I have the MojoMojo Overdrive, the Flashback Delay, & now the Spark Booster pedal. I'm using these pedals, on my pedal steel guitar. I just wish I started using TC Electronic products, a long time ago! Especially the Spark Booster pedal. They are ALL great pedals though. I'm definitely a "TC Convert."

Man o man, o man!!! Just pure awesomeness.

I have the TC Electronic, Spark Booster now....& absolutely love it!! I'm glad I bought the full size version. It's definitely worth the extra money.

I had it in clean mode on the toggle switch, & the 1st thing I thought was---how did I ever play without this pedal!!? It REALLY makes my amp sound so much better. I usually play through a Roland Cube 80X Amp.

Then today, I thought I'd try the mid setting on the toggle switch. WOWW!! I had a smile from ear to ear. It REALLY brings out the very best in everything. It almost sounds like a great tube amp now--very close!! Best purchase I've made in ages.

It gives added punch, big time....& I can control how much punch I want at the time. I swear I have better string separation now. Better overall tone & sound, period. More than happy with this pedal. I keep it on, always! The other reviews definitely are not hype. This pedal does just what I've read from other reviews here.

The tone controls come in very handy too. The toggle switch is a great idea. I use the clean setting & the mid setting. I think I will keep it on the mid setting most of the time.

This pedal, just sounds SO INCREDIBLY GREAT!! This is my 3rd TC Electronic pedal. I wanted TRUE BYPASS, for all of my pedals. I had been using mainly Boss pedals, but they aren't True Bypass.

I'm very impressed with this company. I have the MojoMojo Overdrive, the Flashback Delay, & now the Spark Booster pedal. I'm using these pedals, on my pedal steel guitar. I just wish I started using TC Electronic products, a long time ago! Especially the Spark Booster pedal. They are ALL great pedals though. I'm definitely a "TC Convert."

I used this as just a clean boost after my OD on the mid setting to give my rig a little solo boost. But after I tried putting the Spark into Fat mode and diming the gain, it knocked my other OD off my board without a second thought. Even through my Crush SS amp, this thing sings! There is just enough gain for me, not over the top, but a nice thick rock crunch sound. The active EQ knobs are great for adding some bottom end to a chimey single coil guitars or dialing in a slight treble hump to meaty humbuckers. This is by far my favorite pedal on my board right now for it's versatility, never mind the sound quality that makes my SS roar like a good tube amp and the build quality that would make a bomb shelter jealous. I have a few different TC pedals on my board and I'm always very impressed with their products, but they really knocked it out of the park with this one. I love it and I wouldn't hesitate to get another in a heartbeat if something happened to mine.

I bought this pedal to help bring the mids out in my amp. At lower volumes it had always been a little on the dark side, but when I put this in the effects loop, turned down the gain all the way and set the level to just a slight boost and flipped the switch to "mid" everthing changed. It was exactly what I was looking for. I dialed in the treble a little more as well. If your amp doesn't have a presence control but an effects loop, you can basically turn this pedal into a presence control. I can't wait to play around with it in the front of my amp as well.

I run this into the front end of a Fryette Sig:X. The Spark Booster just makes the amp shine even more than it already does. I use mine as a clean boost. It puts a nice "edge" on just about every tone i use this thing just has something special about it. Love it. Cant imagine my pedal board without it.


Thanks to Aaron Hoff for all your help!

I can not say enough about this pedal. I have tried countless so called transparent OD's, amp simulations, Tube this and thats. To me they are all just buzz boxes. I run the gain mostly around 9:00. But around 12:00 things get really hot. Sustain and OD but without the fuzz. Harmonics pop out and long feedback sustains. All uncolored. I love this pedal. Now I can obsess on other things rather than looking for the gain sound in my head I could not find.

I ended up buying a number of other overdrive pedals (some very expensive), but this Spark Booster is the one that does exactly what I need. I was looking for something to put a little hair on clean guitar patches on my GT-100 to fit in a mix, and that I could just leave on all the time. I use the mode switch set on 'mid', with gain 08:45, level 11:00, bass 09:15, and treble at noon. The guitar is connected to a TC Electronic HyperGravity compressor, then to the Spark, the GT-100, and a pair of PE60s. The Spark gives a beautiful tube sound with the exact right amount of breakup when I hit the strings hard... perfect! Tried it with 4 guitars (humbuckers, split coils, and mini-humbuckers), and the transparent breakup sounds just right with all guitars on every clean patch.

Decade ago had oh so many tube guitar amps, but nowadays I only play and record at home. Nothing else I've tried comes close to the Spark for that full clean tube-like (6L6) breakup. TC Electronic makes the best pedals that I can afford.

In closing the Spark Booster is magic, and that's as good as it gets. And thanks again for the help, Philip!

Great pedal. I was looking for a pedal to give a big mid-range boost for my guitars, especially strats, instead of buying one guitar that had the mid-range boost built in. The TC Electronic Spark Booster gives up to 26 db mid boost, which does exactly what I wanted. It also turns out that the Spark does a lot more. It has a switch for fat, clean and mid soudnss It has treble and bass knobs and a gain knob, allowing a wide range of sounds. It also has a true bypass, nice for your pedal board. This pedal is a great addition to my pedalsm and is surprisingly inexpensive for what you get.

You can get a lot of different low gain sounds from this. The booster effect is quite strong, but is easily dialed back if you just want to add texture/grit.

This pedal is killer! I was debating on whether or not to get the mini or the regular, and so I decided to go with the regular size so that I could tweak it more for clean boosts for my clean songs, mid boosts for my solos, ad any other boost-related needs I would inevitably have. This pedal is almost like having 3 awesome pedals in one: A boost of course which provides enough boost for even the quietest players, a gain knob for pushing your distorted rhythm tones into white-hot lead guitar screams or for even pushing your clean rig into a light overdrive, and an EQ pedal that can add bass for a rounder, smoother tone or add sparkling highs to give your sound a little shimmer.

after comparing various boost pedals, some boutique, some stock, some rare, some old and some new, I will have to say that the Spark boost is by far the best one out there. You can have clean gain IF you want but what makes this pedal really neat is the gain knob. You basically have an almost quasi-tube screamer like sound but less grit and crunch still you turn the gain all the way to the right and you got yourself a complete crunch pedal. Also thrown in are bass and treble which are extremely useful and then the volume. I decided that this pedal was superior to the other more boutique type ones because it allows me to either introduce a little grit a lot of grit or no grit but still boost it about 20 dB of clean gain. If you are really confused as to what boost pedal to get, again I highly suggest you go ahead and go with this pedal. After doing my testing, I have found that this is superior.

Tops! I can color my boosted signal any way I'd like.

I love this thing. I play through a Mesa Mark 5. I catch myself leaving the spark booster on all the time. I don't need any extra gain, but I can't play at the volume I'd like to, so I use this in front of the amp to get a pushed sound and more harmonic feedback. Also gives a good beginning of overdrive sound.Got it to try out for these purposes, and it delivered 100%. Cool pedal!

As always great service from Sweetwater, I play through a rectoverb 25. guitars are a Tele, Strat and a Les Paul. The Fat setting really fattens up the single coil pickups and the eq can put them right where you want them. the clean setting works really good for the humbucker lead tones. Very happy with purchase.

As the 24 other reviews highlight, this thing is awesome. It just adds that little extra something your signal is missing to create saturated, creamy goodness through your amplifier. I use it as a mid boost at unity gain and it works fantastic. It works awesome in front of my Jekyll and Hyde Overdrive/Distortion as well. It's quickly becoming one of those "always on" pedals on my board because it sounds so good.

Tc is making some great stuff. I bought the Mojo Mojo and loved it so I thought I would get the spark booster without hearing it first. Its everything the good reviews say. The toggle switch is useful and makes a big difference in sound but I prefer the clean setting. If you already like your sound you will like this pedal.

Exactly what I needed. Adds so much to my tone and crunches my amp perfectly. Definitely would recommend to a friend.

The product description is accurate, this isn't a one trick pony. It does clean and it does it well. Very transparent, but it's also super versatile! I LOVE the fat setting. With a quality tube amp and the spark on the fat setting with the gain cranked all the way up you get glorious tone. There's so many other nice uses for this pedal. I've had it for over a year and I don't see myself ever getting rid of it. It's definitely worth checking out.

This pedal gives everything I could want in a boost pedal. I personally have it first in my signal chain (right behind my tuner). From clean to gritty driven boost, great EQ . I keep it on all the time and just drive the amp a little harder. This pedal was recommended by my Sales Rep Arend Raby and he has NEVER steered me wrong. Great pedal.

Love the Spark Booster. Works equally well as a mild volume bumper or as a kick up for solos (making use of the gain knob for that extra grig). Might grab another.

If you already have a great sounding tube amplifier, then buy this pedal!!!! It'll blow you away!!!!!

I've ran it through the front end. I've ran it through the FX loop. It works amazingly well in either position. You can use it to boost leads, fills, or just leave it on all the time.

I run it in clean boost almost 100% of the time. It adds beautiful warm harmonics on both clean and overdriven tones. It's my favorite pedal by far.

Check this out. Got a 1957 reissue 2x12, nine tubes (including two rectifier tubes), special custom speakers 12" each, two channels - bright/normal with presence and treble/bass, 40 watts, hand made and wired, made in Corona, CA, the best amp I've ever had. Well out this TC Electronic Boost pedal - increase the gain you get a little crunch/grit - very nice! Boosts 20 some odd dB so if you have an awesome amp GET this pedal!

First off l have tried and returned a lot of boost pedals that claim to be "clean" . This pedal stays clean! You can also make it crunch, or fat, or cut threw. It can handle 4 stacked pedals set to unity or slightly more without over loading the input stage. If your amp doesn't have a master volume, this pedal will hit your preamp section perfectly. Just using this one pedal you can get great guitar mojo. Very inspiring!!! Get it, l love it!!

A great simple to use pedal that does not change your leads into fuzzy mush. Adds enough distortion if you want it, or keep it clean and loud.

Slap this bad boy in between your fav axe and amp, dial in some gain, and dig in!!!

I have this pushing a Fender Mustang 1 (V1) (that many whine is too digital sounding, blah, blah, blah...) set to Fender Twin model and I get Robben Ford'esque tonage.
Don't buy into the salad-tosser's who say you can't get good sound unless you have $$$ Tube amps, "Magic" cables, and such.....
Forget "artistic" endorsemennts from those who are paid to pimp flavor of the month products...
Steal this Pedal!!!

Can you Dig it

The fact that I'm taking time out to write a review tells you something because I never have before. This pedal is insane. The 'CLEAN' mode is just that, very Little Wing-ish and completely transparent! Harmonics pop and your tone from your amp just gets louder and juicier. You can literally hear/feel the tubes getting extremely warm and responsive. The 'FAT' mode gives you slight compression and does just that, fattens up your tone. This mode has more gain on tap and can be used as your only OD pedal if you need. The 'MID' mode is pretty straight forward in the fact that it boosts your mids just like a TS style pedal but much better. I recently did a huge pedal shootout with a Keeley Katana, Spark Mini Booster, Fulltone OCD, Wampler Euphoria, Fulltone Fat Boost, Pigtronix Class A Boost and a JHS Double Barrel. In the end, I kept the Spark Booster and the Euphoria. I leave the Spark Booster on all the time and use the Euphoria as an extra gain stage for an extremely smooth, singing, Dumble-esque tone. Also, as all great pedals do, it responds perfectly to your guitar volume knob. I can't say enough. If you sound good already but want to take your sound and make your guitar sing like none other, give the Spark Booster a shot! You won't regret it.

I have tried a lot of the big names in drive pedals. This is my favorite pedal for boosting.. It's so versatile. It takes your natural tone and gives it more. Almost seems like a compressors, the eq is so versatile, the mid boost will push your amp into a sweet distortion. If you aren't a big fan of your normal tubescreamer type pedals for a boost this one will make you happy!

Clean, clean, clean boost that can be used alone or as a modifier for other pedals. The Spark changes the dynamics of my pedal board and gives more punch to overdrive and distortion. It's also nice for the gain going into a small tube amp.
I wouldn't be lost without it but I would be missing some flexibility.

This pedal is just exactly what I wanted and mode. The 3 modes are great, I use it in front of my tube amp to spice things up and works great!! I just want to keep it on al the time : )

I bought the pedal with the intent to use it as a volume boost for solos. However, I’ve been keeping it on at all times because it does a great job with enhancing the sound of my amp and the rest of you pedal board.

If you can't find a use for the Spark Booster, you're doing something wrong. It's incredibly versatile, yet incredibly simple. Works equally well (and extremely well) as an end-of-chain, always-on, clean boost to fatten and warm up your clean tone, and as a pre-dirt box lead boost. Clean as a whistle so you'll be getting no real coloration. The Gain knob will fatten things up, or add gain, depending on how your amp is set, and how far you push the knob. You can leave the EQ flat or use it to tweak your guitar signal. Great for adding girth to single coils or un-muddying a humbucker. I really am having trouble deciding where to put it because it excels in every application I've tried it in. The Fat and Mid settings do exactly what you think they do, and they do it well. Though, personally, I leave it on clean, cause that's what I'm after.

With a good distortion tone this thing will boost it better and make it versatile. The Fat/Clean/Mid switch is magic. Besides not deminshing my tone... I can tweak the bass and treble, add some grit, and boost or compress the tone by rasing or lowering the volume on the pedal. For these reasons I have two of these white beauties. One pedal for compressed mids and one pedal for a over-the-top fat heavy sound.

I got this as a promotion by buying 2 other pedals - the Mojomojo and the Corona Chorus. (I also have the Flashback x4). I was quite pleased with the other pedals, and use them in series with my Boss ME-70, and then this arrived. I was not expecting much, based on what I had read.

So I was really impressed when I plugged this in my pedalboard (I put it in after the other TC pedals and just before the ME-70.) This adds a wonderful crisp, crunchy, but not muddy overdrive to my Strat and Tele that is just delicious. It works so well, that on those 2 guitars I tend to leave it on most of the time. I also use it on my Gibson ES 137, but those humbuckers get muddy with too much OD and so I turn it way down. I power this with a One Spot and also used a battery. I found the battery worked well but made no difference in noise level and so have left it out. This pedal is typical of all gain devices in that it does create noise. (Just like the compression and overdrive on other pedals - no more and no less.) It is worth it however. I really like it.

This pedal does everything that it says it does! it boost my solos, and boosts my melodies. and anything else that i want to stand out from the mix. i play metal music in a cramp basement and my drummer crashes so loud and between the monitors and other guitars i need a hot knife to cut through some hot METAL butter. i love this pedal: great build, cool looks, durable, and solid. I've seen a lot of complaints about the WHITE indicator light BUT i really like it! its different and very bright, not a problem with it! I'm very excited that the spark booster is around its exactly what i needed on my board. its a must. buy it, love it, GO!

I've always felt that the best rock tones comes from a cranked high-gain amp (and not via the use of distortion/OD pedals into a clean amp). However, sometimes high-gain amps need a little something extra to either push them a little harder, tighten up the sound, or make it a little more thick/sustaining (I was looking for the latter). Over the years, I have occasionally used overdrive pedals to help with that little extra something (my favorites being a Tube Screamer or Chandler Tube Driver). With my latest amp, an EVH 5150iii EL34 2x12 combo, I love the crunch channel, but don't really use the ultra (super high gain) channel. The crunch channel just sounds more pleasing to my ear. Ideally, I would have preferred to have two crunch channels, so I can have one with moderately high gain (for rhythm) and one with about 25% more gain (for lead). I decided to try a Tube Screamer (actually it was the JHS Bonsai pedal, which clones 9 different Screamers), but it colored the tone a little too much. Having never used a boost pedal, I was a bit apprehensive, but I read enough positive reviews of the Spark Booster to give it a try (also knowing I could simply return it within reasonable time if I didn't like it. It was EXACTLY what I was looking for. The "Clean" setting thickens up the tone without altering it, and makes leads sound fuller and a bit more sustaining. However, I'm finding that I really like the "Mid" setting even more, as it helps your leads cut through the mix better. The "Fat" channel is a bit too woofy sounding with humbuckers, but it can help thicken up a single coil pickups. I might change settings slightly depending on the guitar I am using, but I typically keep the gain all the way down/off, the level at noon, the bass at 11' o'clock, and the treble at noon. I have not experimented with using this pedal as a traditional overdrive into a clean channel of an amp, so I will leave that to others to review. Like I said, I already have what I feel is a great base tone, and I was simply looking for something to enhance leads. People may not hear the difference much when I engage the pedal, but I can definitely FEEL it while playing.

Awesome boost pedal! Totally transparent in the "clean" mode. However, Gain is not really significant in clean mode, but that's the point right? "Fat" mode is where it's at for single coils & really thickens up the tone of a telecaster or Les Paul with P-90's. "Mid" mode probably works great with "scooped" fender amps, but My EL-84 tube amp is already "mid heavy" so I don't use this setting.
This is a great pedal & must-have on my board. It doesn't do anything fancy on it;'s own , but paired with a cooking tube amp or another gain pedal, it's great..

Great booster with true by pass!!! Sweetwater had it to my house very fast, as always!

I bought this pedal to boost my leads. The day I received it I used it at a live outdoor gig. It performed flawlessly. I like that fact I can add gain to give my leads a little more grit. Excellent note clarity.

Have been using this with my bass rig (MTD into Traynor YBA300 tube head) for over a year and have to say that this is a must have piece of gear. Is dead simple to use, truly transparent and versatile as all get-out.

Even if only used for the active EQ control - is well worth the money, but it ads just enough compression to push a great amp to the sweet spot without sounding sterile and sits perfectly at the end of a signal chain to even out any odd frequency changes when using multiple pedals.

Finally, for those bassists using both active and passive instruments it works very well to level out volumes to keep knob tweaking on stage to a minimum. the true-bypass is quiet as a mouse. If you are not using one of these you are simply missing out!using tubes

I bought the mini boost pedal from Sweetwater and it worked very well but it failed in the middle of a gig. I called Ben Porter and the mini boost wasn't available so he sent me the full sized Spark Booster. It has a few more features and is a bit larger but does exactly what it's supposed to. Thank you Ben Porter for taking care of me. Sweetwater takes care of their customers.

I've had a Spark Mini booster on My pedal board for many years now, and I just wanted to see if I was missing something.
It turns out that I'm not really, there is a little more tone shaping available with the gain, bass, and treble, but I find the Fat and Mid positions are something that I don't use. To My ears there's just a small amount of improvement between the Spark and the Mini, but I think the Mini will be going back on the board.

I needed a little clean boost to up the signal coming out of my Ditto looper pedal and purchased the Spark. It does give me what I need at a great price. My only issue with it is the switch is noisy. I also own a Polytune and it seems like the same switch but the Polytune switch is not as noisy. I must say though you can't really find a boost pedal for the price and the Spark seems awfully close to their MoJo pedal that I also own. So close I wondered at some point if TC didn't just re-package.

well i went with the reviews and bought one...ok i was excited, but when i hooked into the daisychain it made POPPING sounds when i strum....i lowered levels and played around with it and it stopped making the POPPING sounds, but then the POPPING sounds came back, maybe i got a deffective unit but it was kinda of a letdown....not going through the return issues, i just want to happy with the unit they shipped me....what a bummer....-jlr-

This pedal has an excellent clean boost. Perhaps this alone is worth the price of the pedal. Transparent and retains guitar tone. The Mid and Fat do not sound so good.

Adds harsh high frequencies. There's a reason for them on sale (used) at abundance on reverb.

I must start by saying that I love the way this pedal sounds and I have other TC products that work flawlessly. I am on my TC SP #3 from sweetwater. All three have had faulty switches. Sweetwater has been great about dealing with these issues, but I'm terribly frustrated with the situation.

I loved this pedal at first, I had bought a used one and it is awesome, its got the clean boost, the mid, and the fat boost, they're all great. The first one I had lasted a few weeks, I figured it broke because it was used and not taken care of before so, I ordered a fresh one and I had it a month and one day when it went out in the middle of a set. I wish this company would fix the issue because it's a great idea of a pedal, but it needs to be much more durable.

Booster sounds to AM sound. It changed the sound of the guitar. It is constructed good but I am looking for another booster.

A total bust. Nothing useful here from a musical point of view. After 49 years of playing the most useless effect I have ever bought.

I bought this, a Corona Chorus and Flashback delay. According to the advertising, if you bought two effects, you would receive a free mini tuner. I have not seen or heard anything about a delivery of such tuner, or have I received any info about ever getting this piece. Very disappointed in all three.