{"id":625332,"date":"2026-06-07T02:45:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T02:45:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/625332\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T02:45:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T02:45:19","slug":"positive-grid-reactor-review-does-your-amp-need-an-ai-chatbot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/625332\/","title":{"rendered":"Positive Grid Reactor review: does your amp need an AI chatbot?"},"content":{"rendered":"

$349, positivegrid.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Hands up if you\u2019re sick of hearing about AI<\/a>? It is the two letters everyone seems to be getting increasingly fed up of here in 2026, as promises of generative AI solving all the world\u2019s problems a year or so back seem to have ended up with a reality where the technology\u2019s primary application seems to be driving your friends to psychosis, rendering your job obsolete or, at best, ensuring that your next phone or laptop is going to cost dramatically more than it should do.<\/p>\n

Obviously, not everyone feels that way, but if there\u2019s one group of people who seem to be inclined to be even more sceptical about the benefits of large language models than the general population, it\u2019s musicians.<\/p>\n

Wholly AI-created music and art is straight up bad, and morally suspect along with it \u2013 you won\u2019t find too many real musicians dying on that particular hill \u2013 but is it always a bad thing, necessarily? Are we still capable of detaching the useful and non-sketchy uses of machine learning from the attention-grabbing stuff that everyone seems to hate?<\/p>\n

All of which is a long-winded way of observing that it\u2019s a pretty interesting time for smart amp king Positive Grid<\/a> to be launching its first real foray into creating a proper for-purpose gigging guitar amp<\/a>\u2026 and one that has AI quite literally written on the control panel.<\/p>\n

The Reactor is that amp, but PG is at pains to point out that the \u2018AI\u2019 in this case actually stands for \u201cAmp Intelligence\u201d \u2013 and it promises a wholly new way for guitar players to go about crafting their guitar tones\u2026<\/p>\n

\"PositiveImage: Adam GassonPositive Grid Reactor 50 \u2013 what is it?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to point out right at the top that the Reactor is deliberately and intentionally NOT a Spark product. Positive Grid\u2019s revolutionary smart amp family has spent half a decade building up goodwill amongst the guitar community \u2013 and with good cause given how impressive the Spark is and remains as a platform.<\/p>\n

The Spark has, on several occasions now, attempted to break away from the confines of bedroom practice \u2013 the Spark Cab<\/a> made any Spark amp gig-ready, while the Spark Edge<\/a> and Spark Live<\/a> portable PA systems were designed to cater to whole bands.<\/p>\n

The Spark could never fully escape its roots as a pure home practice solution, however, and so it makes sense that Positive Grid has now created a bespoke new platform that combines some of the best bits of both Spark and its BIAS X<\/a> amp software, and put it into an affordable proper guitar amp.<\/p>\n

But, Positive Grid being Positive Grid, they were never going to put out yet another affordable modelling combo into the great Katana<\/a>-killer bun fight. To their credit, the brand always tries to come to the party with something new and innovative, and in this case it\u2019s the aforementioned Amp Intelligence.<\/p>\n

Amp Intelligence is, says PG, \u201ca new type of sound engine that builds guitar tone on demand\u201d. They\u2019re keen to call it an \u201cintelligent tone engine\u201d, but in real terms that\u2019s an AI chatbot that has been trained on over 200 different amplifiers<\/a> at a component level \u2013 gain stages, transformers, bias points, harmonic response; the lot \u2013 and can use that in-depth knowledge of how amps work to build a tone for you on demand.<\/p>\n

So the theory goes, that knowledge enables you to have a chat with your amp \u2013 via the accompanying Reactor smartphone app \u2013 describing the tone you want via text, an image or a sound clip. The AI will then analyse what you\u2019ve given it, and spit out some suggested tones that you can then tweak either on the app or using the controls on the amp itself, and save forever. Like most chatbots, Amp Intelligence can apparently learn your preferences sound-wise over time, and so the more you use it, the better it\u2019ll get at creating sounds you like.<\/p>\n

Away from the high-tech stuff, the amp itself is impressively kitted out for one in this price point. The base 50-watt version features a 12-inch custom-designed speaker, with switchable power scaling down to 25w and 1w. Round the back you\u2019ll also find a cab-simulated line out, USB-C for direct recording, MIDI, headphone out, power amp input and effects<\/a> loop. The amp features built-in Bluetooth; both for communicating with the app, and also for streaming music directly to the unit.<\/p>\n

Under the hood and away from the AI, you\u2019ll find 24 different onboard amps to choose from, as well as 28 different effects types. The control panel is fully featured in a way that no other PG amp has been before \u2013 you can select from six different amp types using a classic Line 6<\/a> Spider-style rotary (from Clean to Extreme) or override them by choosing one of eight onboard signal chain presets.<\/p>\n

You get full control of your tone stack, plus the ability to tweak the level of whatever effect is in one of the six different effects blocks. If you want hands-free control, the Reactor pairs with optional Reactor Control Bluetooth controller ($149), which offers you full wireless control of your presets, or the ability to run it in stompbox mode \u2013 if you run out of battery the switch can be plugged in, so you don\u2019t have to worry about a lack of juice ending your gig.<\/p>\n

\"PositivePositive Grid Reactor Control Bluetooth controller. Image: Adam GassonPositive Grid Reactor 50 \u2013 build quality and user interface<\/p>\n

Upon removing the Reactor from its box, I\u2019m reminded that not every modelling amp can be as back-friendly as the trusty Tone Master Princeton<\/a> that sits in its usual testing spot \u2013 though at 10.4kg, it\u2019s still a good kilo lighter than the Katana 50<\/a>, though a little heavier than the Blackstar<\/a> ID:X<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Like all of Positive Grid\u2019s amps, the weight is reflected in a reassuring overall build quality. The wood cabinet feels solid and well put-together, the simple black tolex and black and gold grille cloth are understated and professional, and the control panel is clearly laid out with premium-feeling knobs, switches and buttons.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve come to expect from Positive Grid, the app connection experience is pretty seamless. I downloaded a test version of the new Reactor app to my iPhone 16 and within a few seconds it had connected the amp and was displaying the signal chain for the preset the amp was currently set to. You can adjust everything in real time both on the app or on the device, and changes are reflected instantly.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re 30 years into amp modelling at this point, and so you\u2019d think there wouldn\u2019t really be much to say about the user interface and signal chain given that it\u2019s all rather standardised at this point. Except, for some reason, rather than represent each amp and effect using easily recognisable graphical depictions of said amp \u2013 a Tube Screamer<\/a>, a Marshal<\/a>l amp etc \u2013 they\u2019ve opted to use incredibly ugly AI art instead.<\/p>\n

\"PositivePositive Grid Reactor app effects. Image: Guitar.com<\/p>\n

For a variety of reasons, this sucks. For one, it sucks that the creative humans at Positive Grid don\u2019t deem the labour of a fellow creative human artist something that\u2019s worth paying for. For another, as a product that\u2019s aimed at newer players, the fact that none of the amps and effects are easily recognisable as themselves makes the whole thing harder to navigate on the fly. Thirdly, they look \u2013 and I must allow myself to speak plainly here \u2013 total shit. Amps with knobs where knobs would never be, pedals<\/a> with classic GenAI gibberish written all over them\u2026 who wants this?<\/p>\n

Anyway, that aside, it\u2019s all pretty straightforward \u2013 in fact, if you\u2019ve ever used a Spark amp, the signal chain stuff is basically identical; it\u2019s all very simple.<\/p>\n

The app lacks the SmartJam and similar home practice-focused tools of the Spark app, because this is obviously a gig-focused bit of hardware, but you do still get access to the ToneCloud platform, which allows you to search and download user-generated presets. Obviously, I\u2019m reviewing a pre-release demo version, so it\u2019s pretty quiet in there at the moment, but if the Spark version is anything to go by, this could soon become a hugely deep library of sounds.<\/p>\n

The last part of the app is the \u2018Creator Hub\u2019 and this is the bit where we can delay no further, we must prostrate ourselves at the feet of the Amp Intelligence.<\/p>\n

\"PositivePositive Grid Reactor app Creator Hub. Image: Guitar.comPositive Grid Reactor 50 \u2013 does Amp Intelligence actually work?<\/p>\n

Tapping on the Creator Hub takes you to a user interface with four options, displayed with \u2013 don\u2019t think you\u2019re getting away that easy \u2013 more ugly GenAI art. The options presented let you either describe your tone using text, take a photo of something you want it to create a tone out of, and the ability to upload or record a song for it to analyse.<\/p>\n

The text one is probably the one that most of us will go to first, and so it\u2019s where I start first, and instantly I find the hype bumping into the reality of the hardware. Perhaps it\u2019s my fault, but when reading the blurb accompanying Amp Intelligence, I was struck by the claim that \u201cany tone imaginable can be delivered on demand, from the familiar to never-before-heard\u201d. That sounds pretty exciting, doesn\u2019t it? Especially when you combine that with the claim that it has \u201cdecoded over 200 amp designs at the circuit level\u201d.<\/p>\n

With that in mind, I don\u2019t think it was wholly unreasonable to expect that Amp Intelligence would be able to use that circuit-level knowledge to, y\u2019know\u2026 create a new amp sound? One that combined, say, the glassy cleans of a Fender<\/a> with the full-throated roar of a Marshall? But alas no, despite various attempts to get it to mash up amp circuits in an unholy Frankenstein\u2019s monster of tone, it always just gave me one of those 24 amp models with some EQ or other tools to make it sound like I asked for. The future, eh?<\/p>\n

The experience of using the chatbot input will be familiar to anyone who\u2019s tried to get any other kind of AI chatbot to do something mildly tricky. Sometimes it works like a charm and gives you what you want straight away, other times it\u2019s massively wide of the mark.<\/p>\n

It has a bad habit (just like BIAS X) of responding to my requests to tweak a tone by adding more stuff to the chain \u2013 if I asked it to tweak the tone stack, for example, rather than adjusting the settings on the amp, it seemed to want to always chuck an EQ pedal into the mix.<\/p>\n

It also seems to do that thing that anyone who\u2019s used an AI image generator will be familiar with \u2013 the more you ask it to tweak a thing, the messier the whole thing gets. In practice, it\u2019s easier just to tweak things yourself once Amp Intelligence has got you most of the way there.<\/p>\n

It also occasionally just completely ignores what you\u2019re telling it, then telling me that it had, in fact, done what I asked \u2013 HAL style. After the second or third go-around in this situation, it led to me having what effectively amounted to an argument with a guitar amplifier \u2013 a situation that edified nobody involved, least of all me.<\/p>\n

If you keep things simple and clear, however, it has a pretty good hit-rate for providing usable sounds. It also broadly knows what you\u2019re talking about when it comes to artists, albums and the like. You can raise your own eyebrows about exactly what kind of training data the AI has been gobbling up to be able to do that, but from a user perspective \u2013 especially for a beginner-focused product \u2013 it\u2019s a really handy tool.<\/p>\n

Playing a song into it seems to generate more precise results than talking to the damn thing, and I imagine this would be my preferred means of input were it my daily driver. Clearly having a precise sense of what sound you\u2019re trying to get helps it to deliver a more accurate tone out the other end.<\/p>\n

The picture-taking option feels like a bit of a gimmick \u2013 it is quite fun to see what it thinks would be an appropriate tone for the various tchotchkes I have scattered around my desk, or indeed the handsome cat that wandered into our kitchen (\u201ca tone that captures his playful, agile character\u201d if you\u2019re interested).<\/p>\n

It is actually pretty good if you give it something less random to work with \u2013 for instance, if you take a photo of a real amp, it\u2019ll do its best to emulate it. Equally, I was impressed with the tones it would suggest based on a picture of a guitar: I snapped a shot of the Klang DC<\/a> aluminium-necked guitar Cillian recently reviewed and it suggested a bunch of heavy, doomy tones that would be a perfect companion for it.<\/p>\n

The final option is the Fix My Tone \u2013 basically, you ask the amp to analyse your current sound, tell it what you don\u2019t like about it, and it suggests helpful ways you could change it. While again, the results were not always flawless, the way that it explains what it\u2019s changing and why I think is super useful if you\u2019re a relative newcomer trying to understand how and why a signal chain sounds the way it does. It helps you understand real-world gear in a way that something like this could obscure \u2013 and that\u2019s really useful.<\/p>\n

What it isn\u2019t, however, is quick. The blurb claims that the AI will spit out a tone for you in \u2018seconds\u2019 and while that\u2019s technically true\u2026 it is quite a lot of seconds. Especially for the image prompts, I was waiting a good minute or two for it to come back with something.<\/p>\n

That said, I\u2019m using a TestFlight version of an app that is still in development at the time of writing, so I\u2019d hope that when things are fully up and running, they might be able to speed things up.<\/p>\n

\"PositiveImage: Adam GassonPositive Grid Reactor 50 \u2013 sounds<\/p>\n

All the talk about apps and Amp Intelligences and what a cat would sound like if he was a signal chain does rather obscure the fairly basic questions that we should be asking about any amp \u2013 does it actually sound any good? Well, yes actually \u2013 very.<\/p>\n

Firstly, let me get this out of the way \u2013 for a 50-watt digital combo, this thing is loud \u2013 organ-botheringly loud \u2013 especially at close range and with the amp running at full power. This is a box that could easily make itself heard in a small band, and it does so with plenty of clarity even with the master volume maxed out. It\u2019s still punchy enough for a lot of people on 25-watt mode, while the one-watt is home practice suitable without being totally weedy \u2013 in fact it retains the punch, warmth and character of the amp even at late-night practice volumes.<\/p>\n

If you can get past the godawful visual representations of the amps in question, the sounds here are very impressive indeed. They feel like a definite step up from the (very good) sounds found in the Spark amps, and are much closer to the studio-ready tones found in BIAS X \u2013 that 12-inch speaker does a nice job of putting them into the world, too.<\/p>\n

Another handy bit of tone sculpting comes in the shape of two toggle switches \u2013 Heat and Smooth\/Push. The former is designed to give you six different degrees of playing feel and harmonics without altering the volume of the amp. In practice this is more noticeable with high-gain tones, and it\u2019s subtle, but a nice one to have.<\/p>\n

Smooth\/Push is basically a mid control from what I can tell \u2013 in push mode it\u2019s sharper and easier to cut through in a mix, smooth is rounder and better suited to rhythm playing. If you\u2019ve used the similarly named control on a Boss Katana you\u2019ll know the deal \u2013 it\u2019s a really useful bit of tone-shaping to have at the flick of a switch though.<\/p>\n

\"PositiveImage: Adam Gasson<\/p>\n

The effects are broadly very good without being totally spectacular \u2013 the dirt pedals<\/a> have always been a strength of PG\u2019s offering and they are the standout performers here. But you\u2019ll find most of the usual suspects represented in some fashion here, though you\u2019re limited to just one dirt, one modulation<\/a>, one delay<\/a> etc.<\/p>\n

You might find yourself wondering why on earth there\u2019s only one reverb<\/a> \u2013 click on the relevant effects block and it appears that the only option is \u201cstudio reverb\u201d. Thankfully, this is just some uncharacteristically bad UX \u2013 there are eight different reverb modes hidden on the \u2018mode\u2019 switch of the pedal itself that cover the bases of room, hall, plate and chamber. It\u2019s weird to not have a spring reverb in there, though.<\/p>\n

You can, however, move the blocks in the signal chain around at your leisure \u2013 something that\u2019s not always the case with entry-level amps \u2013 and that\u2019s especially useful if you want to use the effects loop. You can plug your board in and stick it anywhere you like in the chain, really opening up the sonic possibilities.<\/p>\n

In terms of how well it takes pedals, well\u2026 it\u2019s not going to replace the aforementioned Tone Master as my digital pedal platform of choice, but it acquits itself well, even when faced with the glitchiest fuzzes and the most cavernous reverbs.<\/p>\n

\"PositiveImage: Adam GassonPositive Grid Reactor 50 \u2013 should I buy one?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a part of me that wishes that the Reactor didn\u2019t build the polarising and variably successful Amp Intelligence stuff so heavily into the marketing razzmatazz, because you sense that it is invariably going to be labelled the \u201cAI amp\u201d and prejudged on that basis.<\/p>\n

Because in truth, you could never even glance at the Amp Intelligence section of the companion app, and this would be one of the very best affordable modelling amps on the market.<\/p>\n

The sounds are genuinely some of the best in class, the usability and functionality is better than many of the big-hitters in this sector, and it is bloody loud along with it. You could, in the finest traditions of the Spark, spend an afternoon getting your presets set up in the app to your liking, close it down and gig for the rest of your natural life without ever once having to open it again \u2013 everything you need to tweak is right there on the amp itself.<\/p>\n

But we live in 2026 here, and so the Amp Intelligence thing is very much a key plank of this whole endeavour \u2013 no matter how unnecessary it might be for a lot of players. That means that I have no choice but to factor it into my opinions about the product as a whole.<\/p>\n

And look\u2026 it\u2019s\u2026 okay? It\u2019s better than the AI features in Spark, and probably a bit worse than the ones in BIAS X. Most of the time it does a pretty good job of crafting tones for you, and sometimes it makes you pray for the asteroid to hit the earth. Anyone who has had to use an AI chatbot for any kind of serious purpose will understand this feeling.<\/p>\n

There is, of course, the ethical elephant in the room. Positive Grid has never provided a satisfactory answer regarding what they\u2019re using to train their AI models with, and there is of course the environmental impact of running LLMs like this. And that\u2019s before we get into what we were talking about up top in this review \u2013 that a large swathe of musicians are reflexively hostile to anything that attempts to inject AI into music creation.<\/p>\n

It would be a real shame if people wrote the Reactor off on the basis of two letters printed on the control panel, because this is an impressive and serious new contender in the affordable gigging amp world.<\/p>\n

Positive Grid Reactor 50 \u2013 alternatives<\/p>\n

There is perhaps no sector of the guitar amp world more competitive than the one in which the Reactor is wading into. The king of the sector currently is the identically priced Boss Katana-50 Gen 3<\/a> ($349 \/ \u00a3269) \u2013 it\u2019s simple to use and has a wealth of good onboard sounds. Blackstar\u2019s ID:X 50<\/a> ($349 \/ \u00a3289) is an impressive recent attempt to take on the Katana, but if you want something that\u2019s a bit more straightforward and \u2013 I cannot stress this enough \u2013 comically loud, the all-analogue Orange<\/a> O-Tone 40<\/a> ($399 \/ \u00a3329) is a gig-ready monster. If you like Reactor\u2019s smart amp elements but don\u2019t need the gigging power, the Positive Grid Spark 2<\/a> ($349 \/ \u00a3279) is a fantastic home practice tool with less sounds overall, but a much more fleshed-out home-playing experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"$349, positivegrid.com Hands up if you\u2019re sick of hearing about AI? It is the two letters everyone seems…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-625332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}