Cornell Amps Traveller 5: The ideal 5 Watt combo amplifier?
The best all round home and studio valve amp?
5,0 / 5,0 | 
Denis Cornell is arguably one of the UK’s best boutique amp builders and has made amplifiers for many occasions and famous users. He has a reputation for making quality clones of classic amp designs from both sides of the Atlantic. His latest model is the Traveller 5, an amp designed to make your Cornell tones portable.
Cornell Traveller 5
The Traveller is a 5-Watt tube amp based around a single ECC83 preamp and EL84 power amp valve. The amp has four output settings: 0.05, 0.25, 1.5 and 5 Watts. It’s fitted with a single 8″ Celestion speaker mounted into a solid cabinet finished in black Tolex with a basket weave speaker grill.
I’ve owned a Cornell Plexi model and it was almost identical in design and layout to the new Traveller 5. If this thing is anything like my old one, then it will be built like the proverbial brick shithouse!
The handy built-in power attenuation is what makes Cornell’s mini amps so useful. You can achieve great cranked amp tones, without deafening your neighbours. That makes them useful for home recording as well.
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- Cornell Amps Traveller 5 all valve combo · Source: Cornell Amps
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- Cornell Amps Traveller 5 gut shot · Source: Cornell Amps
Clean and Mean
The Traveller 5 has two distinct settings, Clean and Mean. That means you can either go for a warm, clean sound for fingerpicking and chiming chords or a more aggressive, crunchy tone with a distinct midrange boost. Again, this makes this little combo ppealing because it can deal with various situations. A one-trick pony this ain’t.
Controls
The controls are super-simple: Volume, Gain, Tone and a 4-way output selector. That’s it. The only other control is the Clean/Mean switch. The Traveller 5 also has a rather handy pair of Hi-Lo balanced inputs and Extension Speaker output. All this adds up to a well-specified, handmade valve amp that seems suited to home and studio work.
RRP – GBP 499
More Information
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