Godin LGXT into a Positive Grid Spark: the cable and settings cheat sheet
Two cables, seven presets to copy straight in and three things that ruin the sound. Separate settings for the Hendrix pack.
Adrian14 minupdated
Spark EDGE or Spark LIVE? Then take two cables and use them both. One from the ELECTRIC jack into channel 1, one from the MIX jack into channel 2. Play.
Spark 2, Spark 40, Spark MINI or Spark GO? Then one cable, and only into the MIX jack, with one compromise that comes up in a moment. The rest of this page is settings to copy in.
Cables
- Amp off. Cables go in first, power second.
- Cable from the ELECTRIC jack into channel 1.
- Cable from the MIX jack into channel 2.
- On the guitar: Volume knob at 10 and the preamp Volume slider at 10. You balance the levels on the amp, not on the guitar.
- Switch the Spark on. Channel 1 takes a guitar amp model, channel 2 takes an acoustic one.
Why that way: a cable in the ELECTRIC jack cuts the humbuckers out of the MIX jack. The manual says it outright: „the magnetic pickup signal is removed from the mix output”. You end up with two independent paths. On a Spark EDGE, balance them afterwards with the knobs on top, because the bridge transducers leave the guitar louder than the humbuckers.
With a single input the cable goes into MIX and you blend both voices on the guitar. The Volume knob is the electric side, the preamp slider the acoustic one. One amp model then sits on both voices, so heavy overdrive hits the bridge transducers too and the acoustic voice sounds broken. Keep two presets instead, one clean and one overdriven with the acoustic slider at zero.
| amp | inputs | what you do |
|---|---|---|
| Spark EDGE | 2 combo, 2 line | two cables, two voices apart |
| Spark LIVE | 3 jack, 1 combo | two cables, two voices apart |
| Spark 2 | 1 jack | one cable from MIX |
| Spark 40 | 1 jack | one cable from MIX |
| Spark MINI, GO | 1 jack | one cable from MIX |
What each control does
Eight things to turn on the top, and with ordinary cables you use four of them. The rest serve the 13-pin output and sit dead on a jack.
Live: Volume and Tone for the humbuckers, the five way coil switch, and the four acoustic sliders in the top corner. Dead: Synth Volume, the small three way toggle and the momentary switch S1 and S2. The manual says it outright about the toggle: with jack cables it is disabled.
Tone takes the top off. On a clean model that is all it does. In front of overdrive it changes what the overdrive has to chew on, so it moves the character rather than the tone colour. Roll it down to 2 with the fuzz wide open and you get a thick, nasal voice no Treble setting will give you.
Tone is the cure for a piercing solo. Position 5 with fuzz above the twelfth fret can cut the ear. Instead of hunting for another preset, roll Tone down to 4 and carry on. The knob sits in the humbucker path, so it never touches the acoustic side. On two cables, turn it and listen to channel 2: nothing happens.
The tremolo arm changes string tension, which means pitch. The bridge floats, but there is no lock at the nut, so after a hard dive the guitar comes back slightly out of tune. Use the arm at the end of a long note, not in the middle of a riff. The transducers sit in that same bridge, so it bends the acoustic voice too, and that sounds off.
The name misleads, by the way. Tremolo in the Spark app pulses the volume, not the pitch, and has nothing to do with the arm.
The five switch positions
The switch steers the humbuckers only, so it never touches the acoustic channel. Positions 1 and 5 are whole humbuckers and 3 joins everything. Positions 2 and 4 are single coils, which is where the glassy sound comes from.
For the presets on this page: clean on 2 or 4, crunch on 5, solos on 1.
Four presets to copy
Knob values in the app run from 0 to 10. These are starting points, not gospel: copy them, play, then move Gain and Treble, because those two change the character most.
| Acoustic | Electric clean | |
|---|---|---|
| channel | 2 (cable from MIX) | 1 (cable from ELECTRIC) |
| amp | Acoustic Preamp | Black Duo |
| Gain | 2 | 3 |
| Bass | 4 | 5 |
| Mid | 5 | 6 |
| Treble | 6 | 6 |
| before the amp | LA Comp, light | Noise Gate, LA Comp |
| modulation and delay | off | off |
| reverb | Plate Short, 3 | Hall Natural, 4 |
| switch on the guitar | does not matter | position 2 or 4 |
| Crunch | Hendrix | |
|---|---|---|
| channel | 1 | 1 |
| amp | JM45 | Plexiglas |
| Gain | 6 | 7 |
| Bass | 5 | 5 |
| Mid | 6 | 6 |
| Treble | 6 | 7 |
| before the amp | Tube Drive, 4 | Fuzz Face, 8 |
| modulation | off | UniVibe, slow |
| delay | off | Echo Tape, barely there |
| reverb | Room Studio A, 3 | Plate Rich, 3 |
| switch on the guitar | position 5 | 5 for riffs, 1 for solos |
Hendrix without the pack
Positive Grid used to sell a signature set called Experience Jimi Hendrix: six amps and six effects. Since 30 April 2026 it cannot be bought. Anyone who missed it builds the same thing from the standard library, very close.
The Hendrix preset above is the whole recipe: Fuzz Face in front of Plexiglas, exactly the pair he played. No setting in the app will do the rest for you.
The Volume knob on the guitar is your clean and dirty switch. Leave the fuzz on for the whole song. Volume at 10 is full dirt, Volume at 6 cleans the sound almost completely, and your foot never moves. Half of this tone lives there, so practise it before you touch anything else. For solos move to position 1, the neck humbucker on its own, because the fuzz on the bridge turns spiky above the twelfth fret.
Two things from that pack are missing from the standard library.
- Wah. The app has Auto Wah and it reacts to how hard you hit rather than to a foot, so it gives movement instead of a phrase. The cheapest way round is physical: put an ordinary wah pedal between the guitar and channel 1, where it works as in front of any other amp. The app can listen to a foot too, but only with extra hardware, described below.
- Octavia. The standard library has no equivalent, and no point pretending otherwise. You get a hint of it above the twelfth fret on the two thinnest strings, with the fuzz wide open. The high harmonics come in on their own, though it is not the same trick.
If you own the Hendrix pack, set it up like this
Anyone who bought the set earlier still plays it, and both gaps above are filled. You pick from the entries prefixed J.H. Below are three presets for channel 1, one for each job inside a song.
| Riff | Solo | Ballad | |
|---|---|---|---|
| amp | J.H. 45/100 | J.H. Super 100 | J.H. D-Show Master |
| Gain | 6 | 8 | 3 |
| Bass | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Mid | 6 | 5 | 6 |
| Treble | 6 | 7 | 6 |
| fuzz | J.H. Super Fuzz, 7 | J.H. Axle Fuzz, 8 | none |
| J.H. Legendary Vibe | slow | faster | barely |
| delay | off | Echo Tape, 1 | Echo Tape, 3 |
| reverb | Plate Rich, 3 | Hall Medium, 4 | Plate Long, 5 |
| switch on the guitar | pos. 5 | pos. 1 | pos. 3 |
The pack holds four fuzzes and they differ more than the names suggest. Which one to reach for:
- J.H. Axle Fuzz, the Roger Mayer Axis Fuzz, is the thickest of the four and holds a note the longest. The default choice for solos and long notes.
- J.H. Super Fuzz, the Marshall Supa Fuzz, sounds rawer and copes better with full chords. It sits well under riffs and rhythm playing.
- J.H. Fuzz Zone, the Maestro FZ-1, is thin and splutters. Keep it for one moment in a song.
- J.H. Octave Fuzz, the Octavia, adds a second note an octave above. The standard library has no answer to it, and that is the biggest difference the pack makes.
The Octavia only works high up and one note at a time. Switch on J.H. Octave Fuzz, put the guitar in position 1 and stay above the twelfth fret on the two thinnest strings. That is where you hear the second, higher note glued onto your own. On chords it turns to mush, which is how that circuit behaves rather than a fault in the preset. Keep this box in a preset of its own, not the one you play the verse on.
That leaves the wah. The pack carries a model of the Vox 846 pedal called J.H. Legendary Wah, but on its own it behaves like Auto Wah, reacting to how hard you hit the strings. Your foot enters the picture only once the Spark sees an expression pedal, and that pedal plugs into the wireless Spark Control X footswitch. The Roland EV-5 and the Moog EP-3 are among the models known to fit.
Assigning it takes four moves in the app. On the Tone page you tap the icon next to ToneCloud, choose Exp Pedal and assign it Wah LFO. Then you double tap the COMP/WAH box and pick the wah. Auto detect turns into foot control, and the same works with plain Auto Wah. One trap: a wah pedal or a volume pedal will not do here, because Control X passes no audio and only sends commands over Bluetooth.
Everything else on this page holds with the pack installed, the guitar Volume knob included. The signature models change the colour, not the way you play.
Three things that ruin the sound
- A cable left in the guitar. The acoustic preamp is active and switches on the moment a plug goes in, so the battery drains overnight exactly as it does while you play. It lasts about three hundred hours, and the manual names the symptom outright: the bridge transducers turn thin and fuzzy. Unplug the cable when you finish.
- A forgotten Tone knob. You rolled it down for a solo, put the guitar away, and the next day everything sounds like it is under a blanket. Check the knob before you start digging in the preset.
- Overdrive on a single cable. Playing from the MIX jack and switching on a heavy model? The acoustic transducers get the same overdrive. Roll the preamp Volume slider to zero, or go back to a clean model.
That is enough for today. Which preset are you copying first?
Do this now
The Hendrix preset, with a twelve bar blues in E.
Copy the preset from the table, start the loop and play it twice: once with the guitar Volume at 10, once at 6. A blues in E sits on open strings, so the difference lands in the first bar.
Goal: twelve bars both ways, without touching anything except the knob on the guitar.
The Acoustic preset, with Scarborough Fair.
The second cable, the Acoustic Preamp model and nothing beyond a little reverb. The song goes in three and it is quiet, so you hear at once whether the Bass is booming.
Goal: a whole verse without touching a knob while you play.
Play this
three songs, three presetsDrunken Sailor on the Crunch preset, Greensleeves on Electric clean, Scarborough Fair on Acoustic. The same guitar three times and three completely different sounds, without changing a single grip.
» Why two cables, when the MIX jack puts everything out anyway.
It does, but down one path and with one set of effects. Set up the Crunch preset on a single cable, play the open strings with your fingers and listen to the acoustic voice. The argument finishes itself, and with one input you keep two presets instead of two cables.
Read on
- Godin LGXT owner's manual (PDF)Godin Guitars, sections „3 output jacks”, „Mini toggle switches” and „Pre-Amp”Five pages, and one sentence that makes them worth opening: a plug in the ELECTRIC jack cuts the humbuckers out of the MIX jack.
- Amp & Effect ListPositive Grid, Help CenterThe full list of thirty six amps and fifty one effects, each with the gear it models. Look there before you start guessing what is what.
- Spark EDGEPositive Grid, product pageChannel, output and looper details, including the line about the looper working on channel one only.
- An expression pedal as a wahPositive Grid, Help CenterStep by step instructions, plus a list of pedals known to fit. Read it before you buy anything with a TRS socket.
- Fuzz FaceWikipediaThe entry explains why this box reacts so strongly to the guitar Volume knob. That property is what the Hendrix preset stands on.