Shoshin Guitarist

Line 6 Spider Jam Review

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by

Sienark
in

Today I drove 80 miles round trip in Chicago traffic to purchase a Line 6 Spider Jam 75 watt amp in a far south side suburb mobile home community.

Is the Line 6 Spider Jam Any Good?

That’s why some of you came to this website. You want reviews to persuade or dissuade you from buying a Spider Jam. There’s a huge debate about the Spider Jam. Either people love them or hate them.

When I researched my Spider Jam purchase, I found that on different review sites, all reviews were 8+ out of 10 (or 4.4+ out of 5) with hundreds of reviews. So I went for it and arranged to purchase a Spider Jam in the Chicagoland area. Here are the reviews for your reference.

  1. Google Chrome – 4.6 out of 5; 145 reviews
  2. Zzounds – 4.5 out of 5; 57 reviews
  3. Sweetwater – 4.4 out of 5; 53 reviews
  4. Amazon – 4.5 out of 5; 203 reviews
  5. Ultimate-Guitar – 8 out of 10, 84 votes

After using this amp for about 4 hours, here are my initial thoughts on the Spider Jam sounds.

If you’re a beginner or advanced beginner, I think the “sounds” of the Spider Jam are fine. This is 2008 technology, not 2025 technology. Initially after my purchase, I had some “buyer’s remorse”. But the more I played the amp, the more I understood its features, the more I liked it and its sounds.

If you’re an intermediate guitarist of 2+ years, if it’s affordable, test the Spider Jam. If you don’t like it, go buy a $500+ amp instead. Don’t worry, be Happy.

As an advanced beginner guitarist of 16 months, this is a good learning amp with jam tracks and drum tracks. The more I play my pentatonic scales to the Spider Jam song tracks, the more I enjoy it.

Disclaimer: I have moderate hearing loss and play with and without hearing aids. – Shoshin Guitarist

Skip to Bottom of Post for a Spider Jam of “Cajun Blues” with Pentatonic Scales

Just to give you a taste of jamming with the Spider Jam amp.

Super Quick Summary on the Spider Jam

This is a long post. So I wanted to do you a courtesy of summarizing my review and feelings on the Spider Jam.

  1. Initial Impression.
    • The professional guitarist Facebook seller had TWO of these amps for sale. He demonstrated the Spider Jam and it sounded great.
  2. At Home.
    • It’s stinky. Too bad this guy was a smoker.
    • Hurray. I can jam with it.
    • Yikes. This will be a learning curve in utilizing it.
  3. 2nd Session.
    • Display is hard to read it, unless you’re standing up.
    • Uneven pre-set volume can hurt your hearing if you aren’t careful.
    • Still not sure on creating my own tone.
    • Hurray. Jamming with it using the pentatonic scale is a pure joy.
  4. 3rd Day.
    • Hurray, learned how to use Drums feature.
    • Not so Hurray, this is an amp first designed in 2008 so much of the pre-sets are from the 80’s, 90’s, and the early 00’s. But get used to it.
  5. 4th Day. – I AM STARTING TO LIKE MY SPIDER JAM.
    • This has taken a while. You can’t quite appreciate the Spider Jam until you start exploring its menus.
    • Getting Better…
      • …at touring my available pre-sets.
    • Learned How To,
      • Create my own sound and Save it (thanks to the manual).
    • Learned how to turn Guitar Gate/Boost to “ON”…
      • …this means my guitar is louder during “jams” and cuts through the noise better.
    • Appreciate that the Jam licks have such good sounds…
      • …that I’ll just go into them, not use a jam, but use the sound.
      • Cajun Blues would be an example.

When was the Line 6 Spider Jam Manufactured?

Production run: 2008 to 12/1/2022. Designed with the help of a Reinhold Bogner.

My Celestion speaker has a date stamp of 10/22/2012. So it was assembled on or after that date. Can’t find a way to decipher the Line 6 serial number.

This AI Overview shown below from Google Chrome is very useful.

Initial Impression on the Spider Jam

  1. Clean as a whistle.
  2. Dave the Facebook seller played his guitar with the Spider Jam. If a musician as good as Dave L. owns two of these amps and a whole house of music gear, I think the Line 6 Spider Jam is good enough for me.
  3. 100+ Jam Tracks. Delightful. This is a skill I want to develop for 2025.
  4. 350 pre-sets. Again, wow.
  5. Loud as heck at half volume. The Celestion 12 and 2 inch tweeter make a lot of noise.
  6. User manual. Great, glad it comes with the purchase.
  7. Jump drive with seller’s own 1200 backing tracks. He once was a DJ and Karaoke guy before Covid 19 tore apart his business (my guess).

Visit Harbor Freight to Purchase a Padded Dolly

The seller was going to screw caster/wheels onto the amp. He decided not to do so.

He advised I buy a dolly at Harbor Freight in his suburb. Good idea. Purchased a 12X22 dolly right away for about $30. 2 or 3 inches off the ground. Great idea.

Initial Impressions of Spider Jam at Home

  1. Bummer. The guy was a smoker. I can smell it, but not too badly.
  2. Bummer. The Seller forgot to include the power cord.
    • I called him but he didn’t apologize.
    • He said I should use my spares. I politely said good-bye on the phone.
  3. Learning. It will take a while to learn the Spider Jam.
    • But I found the pre-sets.
    • Then I found the jams.
    • Hopefully I will learn more with the user manual.
  4. Dolly. The amp is hopefully safe from the century floods in Chicago that seem to come every 10 years or so. All my equipment is 2 inches or higher off the ground.
  5. Headphones. Be careful with the pre-sets. They vary in loudness so do NOT put the headphones on your ears. Just put them near your ears and turn volume low to high so you don’t damage your hearing.
  6. Jamming. Hurray. I played a few jam sessions and used my knowledge of scales to jam.
  7. Tone from Scratch? This amp isn’t really designed to easily make a tone from scratch. But it can be done, supposedly. It’s a learning tool more than a pure modeling amp. But I can still take a Spider Jam pre-set, alter it to meet my needs, and save the setting. I hope.
  8. 1200 backing tracks. The seller included 1200 backing tracks on a jump drive. He is a guitarist and he was a DJ/Karaoke entrepreneur. I checked his jump drive and the MP3 files are all there. Lots of backing tracks minus guitar leads and vocals. I think I will use them for my Moises app work.

Second Day with my Line 6 Spider Jam

More observations on my Spider Jam.

Spider Jam Negatives

  1. Cigarette stink.
    • The seller said this was a “smokin’ hot deal”.
    • I can smell the amp every time I sit in front of it.
    • Yes, he smoked a lot of cigarettes and it stinks a bit. I will need to clean it up and “charcoal” it a bit to reduce its smell.
  2. The User Manual isn’t terribly useful.
    • Not that helpful, so far.
  3. Display hard to see.
    • Sitting on my chair, I thought the display had gone blank. Silly me, I need to look at it directly from above. But with my old eyes, I do need to look at it closely to see the display contents.
  4. Not intuitive.
    • I am learning the Spider Jam and the Fender B-Dec at the same time. It’s not easy.
    • But I will master it.
  5. Stop/Start Button.
    • I kept pressing the Stop/Start Button on the front panel and nothing worked. Odd.
    • Then I pressed the Stop/Start Button on the left edge and it worked. That’s a bit odd but now I understand it.
  6. How to set pre-gain and post-gain?
    • Still haven’t found the answer.
    • By contract, my Peavey Vypyr VIP-1 is easy with its controls compared to the Spider Jam.

Learning the Spider Jam

  1. Stop/Start Button.
    • It didn’t work again and again.
    • Finally I pressed the left edge of it and it worked fine. Design flaw?
  2. EMI (electro magnetic interference) with the amp.
    • I turned off my 6 overhead fluorescent/dimmed lights and the amp sounds were improved.
    • Again, turn off your fluorescent lights.
  3. Jam Songs I can’t hear my guitar.
    • I turned up my Master Volume.
    • Most important, turn Channel Volume up to hear your guitar with its own voice during a pre-recorded jam. Still not perfect.
  4. Create your own sound. I can create it but haven’t learned how to save it yet. This setting was a nice sound with my 1980’s Harmony H80T electric start style guitar.
    • Twang amp, Green.
    • Bass at noon.
    • Mid and Treble at 2 PM.

Fun and Positives with the Spider Jam

  1. 090 Jam, “Unexcited”.
    • Using my pentatonic skills for jamming this was a lot of fun.
  2. Headphone jack is on the face of the amp.
    • I don’t have to search the backside of the amp for the jack.

On my 2nd Test, I Still Like my Spider Jam Amp

It’s the jam tracks. It’s the jam tracks. Yes, I still like it.

And it does have a big sound with a 12″ speaker and 2″ tweeter. The related Line 6 Spider III 75 Watt amp does NOT have the tweeter or the jam tracks.

Third Day with my Line 6 Spider Jam

Seriously, I have had quicker “dates” than learning this Line 6 Spider Jam amp. But I persist in learning it.

Let’s Start with the Positives

  1. Fun Jams with pentatonic scales
    • 089 Cajun Blues
    • 100 Outlaw Country Club
  2. I learned how to use the Drum feature. Fun.
  3. I don’t have to search the backside of the amp for the jack.

A Few Line 6 Spider Jam Negatives on my 3rd Day of Usage

  1. A Dated Amp with Dated James and Tones.
    • But that’s OK. This Spider Jam was made between 2008 and 2022. Manufacture date unknown.
    • The amp seems to focus on the 80’s, 90’s, and 00’s for its tones and artists.
  2. Hearing Damage with HeadPhones.
    • I mentioned this before, now again. The volume on the presets is very uneven. Never ever move from pre-set to preset without having a lower volume. I wonder, are my ears still ringing from a sonic blast on headphones yesterday with the Line 6 Spider Jam.
    • BE CAREFUL.
  3. START/STOP Button. It sure seems finnicky. Especially when I try to start a song. Do I just press it firmly? Is that the key. The button does seem finnicky or inconsistent.
  4. Trouble Playing with a Jam.
    • Master Volume controls overall sound.
    • Channel Volume controls guitar sound.
      • But today my Jet JS300 didn’t seem to work. Then I plugged in the Glarry, it worked. Then I plugged the Jet JS300, finally it worked.
      • Still a bit confusing.

Things to Learn on my Spider Jam

  1. I have mastered how to play songs/drums so I can jam along.
  2. Now I need to learn how to easily recall a pre-set.
  3. Still need to learn how to Save one of my pre-sets.

New Idea. Can I plug my bass amp the Fender B-Dec 30 into the Line 6 Spider Jam so I can use a Fender engine with theoretically better speakers?

The Facebook seller who sold me the Spider Jam gave me 1200 backing tracks in MP3 format. I need to utilize those jam tracks in my practice.

Desperate for a Blues Tone I plugged into my Fender B-Dec 30

Guess what, it plays decent guitar in this bass amp. But after all, I am moderately deaf 🙁

People do Seem to have a Love/Hate Relationship for the Spider Jam Sounds

I need to get over what others “think” about an amp they don’t own. I can already see its great “learning” potential for me as a 2nd year guitarist.

Fourth Day with my Line 6 Spider Jam: Making Friends with my Spider Jam

I may need to do a cheat sheet by the amp to remember its usage. I am also learning a Fender B-Dec 30 amp at the same time so it’s a bit like learning French and Spanish at the same time: confusing.

Before I Begin, Take Note of these Smaller Day 4 Discoveries

  1. Use the Gain dial.
    • Yes, it can give you distortion.
    • But for me, it gave me greater volume that I liked.
  2. Jam “Song” Guitar Settings are perhaps better than all the fancy pre-sets
  3. Learned how to turn Guitar Gate/Boost to “ON”…
    • …this means my guitar is louder during “jams” and cuts through the jam better.
    • Perhaps I should experiment with the gain dial to increase guitar volume when jamming to a Song.

Three Big Things I Improved or Learned on the Spider Jam Today

Improved – I Became Better on Selecting a Pre-set

There are 3 types of pre-sets.

  1. Styles (my favorite)
  2. Artists
  3. User (this is your area to save your sounds).
    • I believe there are 30.

Learned – How to Create and Save Your Own Setting to the User Pre-Sets

I created a Blues sound with 75% gain and saved it with the name RK_Blues.

Learned – Noise Gate “On” – How to make your Guitar Louder during Songs (jamming) and Make Your Guitar Heard over the Accompaniment

Problem: When pressing the Song button to select and play a song or jam, I couldn’t hear my guitar well enough. Too quiet even with Channel Volume turned up.

Solution: Turning the Noise Gate “On” was the Solution. I hope the setting stays on when I power the Spider Jam up the next time.

Possible Solution: Maybe I should turn the Gain dial “up” or to the right.

5th Day Messing Around with my Spider Jam

Performed Amp Re-set on my Spider Jam

I found instructions, and got lucky.

  1. Turn on the Spider Jam, press the Settings/Tone button for 5-8 seconds.
  2. Observe the display indicating that it is doing a Reset.
  3. Check the User Presets to see if they have eliminated your one and only pre-set.

It worked. This took a bit of software/firmware courage. Hoping that a 13 year old amp would respond to a re-set was a throw of the dice. Luckily it worked. Otherwise I would have been very sad if firmware in amp had changed, badly.

Selecting a Song Will Change your Guitar Tone

Hope so.

This documentation claims it works that way. I’m not so sure. I will need to test it.

But if the Spider Jam changes amp settings for guitar for each Song setting, then could I save that amp sound into my User presets? That would be nice.

7th Day Messing Around with my Spider Jam

Maybe it’s the 7th day of using the Spider Jam. I don’t use it every day. Generally I use it every other day.

Saving a Guitar Tone from a “Song” to User Settings on Spider Jam

Yes, it can be done.

Note: I know of no way to edit a Song guitar tone into the Spider Jam so that this Song guitar tone is permanently altered. This means you cannot change firmware guitar tones.

But, you can definitely take a Song guitar tone that you like, and Save it as a User Setting.

  1. Choose a Song. I chose “Psychedelic”.
  2. Press the right arrow key to LOAD the guitar tone.
    • This loads the guitar tone for “Psychedelic”.
    • If you do NOT press the right arrow key to load the guitar tone, you are playing some other guitar tone that you previously had used.
  3. Edit or do NOT Edit the guitar tone to your liking.
  4. Press Save button. I pressed Save and the display displayed a User Setting name.
  5. Re-name the User Setting. This will mean using the dial to select alphanumeric characters. Experiment, you will figure it out.
    • RK Psyched, that’s what I called the guitar tone.
  6. Press Down Arrow to Save. VERY IMPORTANT.
    • I failed to do this the first time.
    • Second time pressing down arrow key (4 way selector on top of amp) did Save the guitar tone.

Hurray, Pentatonic Jamming to Spider Jam Songs

Last night was amazing. I am currently learning pentatonic scales and I tried jamming to the Spider Jam Songs.

Wow, this is why I bought a 13 year old learning amp, the Spider Jam, so I could jam to it.

Play a Spider Jam Song and jam with your pentatonic scales. The song even has a small indicator on the left telling you what key to use. Wonderful.

Note: Perhaps the Positive Grid amps have practice tracks I could use. But I don’t own one. Maybe one day I will get a Positive Grid Mini. But for now, I am learning to play guitar better with the Line 6 Spider Jam.

Never, Ever, Keep Headphones Completely on Your Ears when Changing Spider Jam Guitar Tones

The volume is erratic. Quiet for one guitar tone, horribly loud for the next.

If you are spinning through the Guitar Tone settings you may hurt your hearing for a night, maybe longer. BE CAREFUL.

10th Day Using a G1on Zoom Pedal with my Spider Jam – Hurray

I will admit, I still am not in love with Spider Jam guitar tones. Maybe it’s the interface, maybe it’s me. The tones seem heavily biased towards loud “metal”.

But today I took my Zoom G1on pedal (a cheapie but a goodie) and plugged it into my guitar and then the Spider Jam.

I was instantly happier with the sounds I was producing through the Zoom pedal into the Spider Jam.

I still love the Spider Jam “Songs” for pentatonic jamming, but for just choosing a sound, the Zoom G1on gave me lots of clean sound options. I like cleans a whole lot more than metal. – Shoshin Guitarist

Spider Jam Pre-Sets and FAQs

  1. Spider Jam F.A.Q. and Preset Information
    • Written February 29, 2008, by “Line6Tony”.
    • Excellent. Read it.
  2. Spider Jam Presets List
    • Written April 4, 2022, by “Line6Tony”.
    • Interesting, the user Line6Tony has been writing about the Spider Jam for 14 years. I am guessing that Line6Tony is a Line6 employee, maybe.
    • I find the two Excel spreadsheets and two PDFs to be a little confusing after using the Spider Jam for only 1 week. But I believe it will make sense as time moves forward.

Later, a Demo of the Line 6 Spider Jam of “Cajun Blues” with Pentatonic Scales

This is why I like the Spider Jam as a learning amp. And my readers, “learning” amps seem hard to find in the marketplace.

One day I will record something for you. Just not today.

Thanks for Visiting Shoshin Guitarist and my Line 6 Spider Jam Review

Thanks again.

I will add more to this post as I learn more about the Spider Jam.

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