NAD - Cornell Traveller 5

^ maybe your ears are happy to make do with dire sounds such as the utterly crap MG30 Marshall I bought... My ears prefer not to. Some SS are decent, most are not; heads are probably much better than combos. The little Yamaha THR is decent, very decent, and modellers have come on a bunch in the last decade. But, still, some of us prefer the tube sound and all the aggravation that comes with it. No doubt, you will enjoy my upcoming tube swap thread... &, yes, I'm sure all Peavey SS amps, which can be bought for under $1 are amazing, much better sounding than an AC30.


syscokid said:
This got my attention, and I'm confused about the manual's statement: Do not operate the mains switch without a 30 second delay between operations"... So, what operations is the manual referring to? The attenuation control?
Click to expand...

I read that as two separate ideas:

1) When turning the amp on/off leave a break of 30 seconds due to some circuitry.

2) Basic info about how the attenuator works and how the tubes lifetime is extended by using the lower power setting both in use and when turning the amp on and off.

But, if operations mean changing the attenuation than that may be an issue that I haven't realised... :oops: The amp was working really well last night - sounding good.
(Reading the manual extract again, operation only refers to turning the amp on and off - it's all good, imho.)
 
Mr Grumpy said:
1) When turning the amp on/off leave a break of 30 seconds due to some circuitry.
Click to expand...
OK... Maybe that's it then. Maybe it's too much of stress on that "internal thermistor" if the on-off switch is flipped back and forth too many times in a short period. That internal thermistor is probably an in-rush current limiter, which is something I've been learning about recently in regards to mods that can improve reliability to tube amps. I bought a couple of these in-rush current limiters to try on a couple of my amps. I've yet to install them, so it has been interesting to read the warning on your amp's manual in regard to this.

I think this is the thermistor on your amp:
Cornell7.jpg
 
^ I don't know how folks can make head nor tail of all those parts and pieces - looking at it makes me wanna cry...

Just wait til I get the Mullards in there, Sysco... &, you can see from the pic that a 10" will fit in there too - I'm thinking locate the new speaker in the top left screw hole (as we look on that picture), so the new footprint will increase down and to the right. Now, what do I have in the kitchen knofe drawer that I'll need to use...
 
Never trust a Korean guitar tech - that's the moral of this story. I've known that for years, but sometimes forget it...

I've a few pedals turned up, let's call them goosers. One came today, plugged it in and nothing, some light so didn't think it'd be the battery, so tried other things as you do... The cables were an MXR cable from the pedal to the guitar, but as I wasn't using the cab, I plugged the short cab to amplifier cable that the Korean guitar tech in the shop made up for me when I got the cabinet... So, obviously I swapped that with another short MXR cable I had and no sound from the pedal, same as before. But, as I was playing and turning the pedal on and off I noticed the sound was much better (with pedal in the chain but turned off) when I was using two MXR cables. So, as you would I took the pedal out of the loop and tested the amp by itself then the amp with the cab via both the special cable the fella made up for me and the short MXR cable. I think you've guessed by now that the cab sounded a lot better via the MXR cable... Now, I always thought that the bloody cab didn't sound as good as it should, so I was gonna take it back to the shop tomorrow - sounded a lot better with the MXR cable than just the 8" standard (pretty cheap) speaker in the amp - as it should right.

So, the crap cable went in the bin, and I'm using the cab - much better sound; very happy no.1

Very happy no.2 = next step, make the pedal work by changing the battery; worked. The pedal is a treble booster - volume knob on maximum is unity with amp, use the treble knob to add in the effect (or, I believe treble boosters are taking away some frequencies...???...), and, it didn't sound as good as I had hoped. I was playing at 75db softish strums to 80db enjoyable strums. But, this pedal has a third knob - the boost knob (it's supposed to be a three in one pedal; treble boost, boost and distortion when you use the boost and treble together).. So, as you would, I thought I'd try and add in some boost, take the pedal volume down to keep the room volume, ok. I also needed to take a tad of the treble boost away as I pushed the boost up - sounded fantastic. But, with the really nice crunchy mids and generally good tone and rocking sounds I got the db app out on the phone - it read 80db, well that was a surprise, the same volume/sound level as before but the perceived volume, the rockingness was much higher. I had a good go at it, and the wife never came in to tell me off. Happy days...


(The tones/settings at 2:30 were the kinda thing I was getting - very similar tone, much lower quality playing...)

I've got 2 of the 4 pedals I order in, when the other 2 arrive and I've tried them all out, I'll do a NPsD thread.
 
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Actually, this pedal really wanted me to get the SG Junior back - just the amp, pedal and a single volume control to rock out with - very nice possibilities with this pedal (I owned it before, so I knew it was a good pedal. I bought this direct from the manufacturer as B-stock, bad paint job, for 115 euro delivered to my door).

Got me in the mood to bash out a bit of John Lennon's Working Class Hero, so I did...
 
Mr Grumpy said:
Never trust a Korean guitar tech - that's the moral of this story. I've known that for years, but sometimes forget it...

I've a few pedals turned up, let's call them goosers. One came today, plugged it in and nothing, some light so didn't think it'd be the battery, so tried other things as you do... The cables were an MXR cable from the pedal to the guitar, but as I wasn't using the cab, I plugged the short cab to amplifier cable that the Korean guitar tech in the shop made up for me when I got the cabinet... So, obviously I swapped that with another short MXR cable I had and no sound from the pedal, same as before. But, as I was playing and turning the pedal on and off I noticed the sound was much better (with pedal in the chain but turned off) when I was using two MXR cables. So, as you would I took the pedal out of the loop and tested the amp by itself then the amp with the cab via both the special cable the fella made up for me and the short MXR cable. I think you've guessed by now that the cab sounded a lot better via the MXR cable... Now, I always thought that the bloody cab didn't sound as good as it should, so I was gonna take it back to the shop tomorrow - sounded a lot better with the MXR cable than just the 8" standard (pretty cheap) speaker in the amp - as it should right.

So, the crap cable went in the bin, and I'm using the cab - much better sound; very happy no.1

Very happy no.2 = next step, make the pedal work by changing the battery; worked. The pedal is a treble booster - volume knob on maximum is unity with amp, use the treble knob to add in the effect (or, I believe treble boosters are taking away some frequencies...???...), and, it didn't sound as good as I had hoped. I was playing at 75db softish strums to 80db enjoyable strums. But, this pedal has a third knob - the boost knob (it's supposed to be a three in one pedal; treble boost, boost and distortion when you use the boost and treble together).. So, as you would, I thought I'd try and add in some boost, take the pedal volume down to keep the room volume, ok. I also needed to take a tad of the treble boost away as I pushed the boost up - sounded fantastic. But, with the really nice crunchy mids and generally good tone and rocking sounds I got the db app out on the phone - it read 80db, well that was a surprise, the same volume/sound level as before but the perceived volume, the rockingness was much higher. I had a good go at it, and the wife never came in to tell me off. Happy days...


(The tones/settings at 2:30 were the kinda thing I was getting - very similar tone, much lower quality playing...)

I've got 2 of the 4 pedals I order in, when the other 2 arrive and I've tried them all out, I'll do a NPsD thread.
Click to expand...

Please be sure that you are using a proper speaker cable for your wonderful new amp...
 
I'll add, after watching Don's video, it was noticeable that the volume increased when I plugged in the MXR cable between the amp and cab than the other - correct, specialist cable that the bloody bastard in the shop made up (and charged me $10). Yes, eESGe, he saw me coming... :p

I still don't think that MXR cable is the correct one to go between amp and cab, so I'm gonna look into this because maybe there's more tone to be found here! Thanks, Don.
 
So, checking through because I've never thought of this before... My Beng in Electronic Engineering was nearly 30 years ago. :rolleyes:

This is my cable to the guitar:

Screenshot 2020-03-28 at 00.53.18.png

&, this is my cable currently from amp to cab:

Screenshot 2020-03-28 at 00.53.27.png

I'm not sure, but I suspect they are just high quality instrument cables. Not ideal to go from cab to amp - but still sounds a lot better than the bloody cable I specifically paid for to do that job. Grrrrr...


Maybe this is the baby I want.

Screenshot 2020-03-28 at 01.01.54.png

If somebody smart like Don (or anybody other than me...) can confirm it than I'll order one up.
 
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^^ & ^^^ thanks gentleman, that's my baby.

I wonder just how bad the cable from cab to amp the fella in the shop made up was to sound a lot worse with lower volume than the MXR TRS. I suspect the S element of the TRS and the fact I happened to be playing at 1/8th watt at the time helped.
 
Mr Grumpy said:
^^ & ^^^ thanks gentleman, that's my baby.

I wonder just how bad the cable from cab to amp the fella in the shop made up was to sound a lot worse with lower volume than the MXR TRS. I suspect the S element of the TRS and the fact I happened to be playing at 1/8th watt at the time helped.
Click to expand...
In your application, the R and S were likely being combined as negative/ground by the mono jacks in place(although that depends on the style of jack in use, and if there was any contact to the R at all).
The T is tiny.
 
Yargnad said:
I was always told from a young age not to flip my tube amps off and on in rapid succession. I always wait at least 1 min after turning the amp off before I turn it on again. I was also told not to flip the amp into standby before turning it off.

Supposedly it's better to use standby only during powering up or for a break of 5 mins or less. Something about cathode poisoning starts to happen after that. But I'll defer to the experts.
Click to expand...
Ha ha... and lately I've been hearing more about not having a Standby switch at all! More internet info to filter through, I guess... :BH:
 
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