Cornell Traveller 5

GUITAR INTERACTIVE STAR RATING:⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

MSRP (UK) £499 (US) $TBC

PROS

Great Tone at Low Volumes.

Super small and light.

CONS

None, it’s the perfect Practice and Studio amp for Authentic Vintage Guitar Tone.

SPECS

Onboard 8-inch speaker

1x 12AX7, 1x EL84

Dimensions: 433 x 375 x 85mm

Weight: 9.9kg/21.8lb

The theme behind the new Traveller 5 guitar combo from British amp maker Denis Cornell, is the ability to allow guitar players the opportunity to own an all-valve, hand-built ‘modern classic’ at a fraction of the cost, without compromising the quality of build or tone. Sam Bell takes this little amp for a spin.

Denis Cornell has been making some incredible valve amplifiers for many years, looking through Cornell’s website you can see the vast amount of credentials he has for making some supreme quality, real valve guitar amps. I first tried Cornell amps when I started lecturing at WaterBear Music Collage in Brighton, the director Bruce Dickinson had a plethora of Cornell amps, Plexi style heads, small combos, the works, one of the amps I use in the practice rooms with students is the very amp that I am reviewing today. The Traveller 5.

This is a 5 Watt Valve Combo with an 8 Inch Celestion speaker. The amp is powered by a single ECC84 Pre Amp Valve and a EL84 Power Amp Valve. The Controls are simple, Volume, Tone and Gain. Plus an added ‘Clean’ or ‘Mean’ switch, which when set to mean gives us more pre amp feeling saturation. There is however a 4th control, this control flicks the amp between 4 different power settings. Having it set to A we get 5 watts, B 1.5 watts, C 0.25 watts and D 0.05 watts. Being able to set the overall power down, we can crank the amps volume and gain stages to get authentic feeling breakup and sustain from the amp. This thing can really sing at high gain settings and still retains a clean dynamic tone that responds incredibly well to pick attack and dynamic playing. On the louder A setting of 5 watts, the amp can project very well through its 8-inch speaker. This amp is ideal for small practice situations, bedroom playing, or miced up for pure vintage tone on a gig or in the studio.

The amp sports a Black Tolex wrap and basket weave grill, and it’s very small, light and portable, and I’d imagine that’s the reason it’s called ‘The Traveller 5’. It really is a one-stop shop for pure valve guitar tone, versatility and portability all at a fair price point (these amps are made by Denis here in the UK!) I highly recommend checking this amp out and others in the Cornell range if you are looking for pure valve guitar tone and high quality build.