Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-24860891-20140615202837/@comment-24854750-20140616230224

Just did some research on saving and loading color palettes, and I found a post on Gamefaqs that says if you SAVE color palettes as COL0 (that is, COL+zero), COL1, COL2 then it will save it as BG, SP, and GRP respectively. After reading this and performing tests of my own, however, I found that this designation will save the appropriate color palette, but it must also be designated with LOAD in order to work (COL0 for BG, COL1 for SP, and COL2 for GRP). Furthermore, any saved color palette can be used with LOAD and any designation. For example, you alter the BG color palette and save it as COL0:BLAH. You can then use these alterations for sprites or graphics simply by programming LOAD: "COL1:BLAH" or LOAD "COL2:BLAH".

Armed with this new knowledge, I could not reproduce your problem however. I had no problem using SPSET, after saving and loading color palettes correctly.