Spark Mini - not ready for prime time!
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I received my Spark mini a couple of days ago. It's buggy as hell! The first time I turned it on everything went perfect. The second time I turned it on, a day later, bluetooth was connected but I couldn't change anything and it sounded like I was in a cavern; not the setting I'd left it on. I ended up doing the factory reset, re-paired bluetooth, and once again it was working. I wanted to see if it would still work correctly the next time I used it, so I turned it off and then back on again. Once more, it shows bluetooth as connected, but this time I couldn't get any sound out of it at all! Even worse, now it will not even turn off!!! Now it's just sitting on my desk, lights on, no sound, preset knob doesn't change, cannot even get the buttons to do the factory reset! It's basically a brick. At this point I'm ready to chuck this amp (or hopefully return it and get my money back!) I did have the original Spark, which never gave me any such problems. I sold that to buy some gear for live performance but was enticed by the idea of a portable battery amp. I've owned a lot of gear over many years. Nothing has been as frustrating or buggy as this!!!
Update: I just looked up the warranty information. Apparently return shipping is out of pocket. For a piece of hardware that has failed 2 out of three times trying to use it, and from which I've had less than 30 minutes of actual use, that is not a good policy!
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@serrada33 Wow, that sounds seriously unfortunate! Most Minis work really well consistently, no issues. I have to be aware which device I last used the Spark Audio or Spark BLE Bluetooth connections on, and disconnect it on that device before expecting connection on a new device, but no issues when using the same device.
I would contact PG support (this forum is not that obviously) as others have had things sorted out. Hope it is sorted quickly!
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@broadkarnage I've contacted them. I've also read on the FB page that response times from support are slow. Seriously disappointed. It's a real turn-off.
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Well this is interesting. I was getting ready to box up the amp this afternoon (haven't received any response yet). Since it wouldn't turn off yesterday, the battery was completely drained. On a whim I plugged it into my computer to charge and lo and behold, it immediately began working again! That was with just a partial charge, so I'll have to see if it still works properly once it's fully charged and unplugged, but so far so good today.