Cornell Romany or Plexi 7?

beed84

@breadfan I could use a pedal at home but even then it'd have to be relatively low. The only time I'm going to be able to crank it is when I've got a day off and everyone else is at work.

chris45

Mine was a 12 inch Celestion Green

Skipped

The Romany Plus and Romany Pro are both superb for anybody that doesn't have cloth ears.
The Jensen speaker can be a little bright but you can fix that by changing to a better guitar. A Gibson.

References to some other  amp maker  that costs much more money, and has nothing to do with the thread title make me suspicious. Fanboyism is OK. On the appropriate fanboy thread.......

Powerslave

One-time Romany owner here - good amp, but nothing special to my mind. The core tone wasn't particularly appealing to me.

I would say it took pedals well and had a great reverb. I remember running a Wampler "Plexi" pedal of some description into it for crunch, and stacking it with a fuzz for a lead tone. I personally felt that it favoured single-coils as mine was susceptible to bass flub and sympathetic vibration with humbuckers - not a unique experience for owners of this model of amp.

Certainly light-weight and portable.

The low power settings were useful at home if you were a bit tired of the sound of the pedal and wanted some amp-provided gain but, as I stated above, it just wasn't my tone. Might be yours, though

Arktik83

breadfan said:

@simonk @CloudNine @Arktik83 @chris45 ;

I'd be interested to hear what speaker was/is in your Plexi 7.

I've long been tempted to get rid of my 50w Plexi & 4x12 in favour of a Plexi 7 - for space as much as volume, I'm predominantly a home player but I do get away with murder in terms of dB (although I do use a Power Brake).

Does the Plexi 7 sound like a small amp?

@beed84 Could you use a drive pedal at home?

Speaker in mine was a 10" celestion greenback.  Was great at the plexi tones but it got very loud very quickly.  The only other "boutique" amp I have owned is a Carr Mercury and that is much nicer in my opinion.

crunchman

Skipped said:

References to some other  amp maker  that costs much more money, and has nothing to do with the thread title make me suspicious. Fanboyism is OK. On the appropriate fanboy thread.......

If you are referring to my Lazy J reference, I was only trying to help.  It's a much better amp.  I had a Romany Plus.  I tried a Lazy J (before all the hype- mine is a really early one with no badge even) and sold the Cornell and bought the Lazy J.

As I've stated twice before in the thread, with the benefit of hindsight, I'd say that the PRRI is a better amp as well, and is in the same price range.  The silver face 68 version is probably cheaper.

revsorg

I'm new to the forum, this is my first proper post so hello everyone.

I've been lucky enough to have played through a couple of Cornells recently and it's been an enlightening experience. I play purely for personal enjoyment and I usually aim for a metal sound, ranging between Scorpions and Van Halen.  Sorry, that's just the way it is.  I tried the Vintage Brown 10 and felt it was OK, didn't really invest too much time in it.  I'm now wishing I had given it more effort. I think if I went back to it I might understand it better.  Understand how to adapt to its strengths instead of trying to make it do something it's not designed for.

Then recently I've been playing through a Plexi 7 12" and am going through what you might describe as a renaissance.  At first I was trying to make these things sound like my old amps (Marshall 100, Rivera M60) which I now believe to have been a mistake on my part.  Historically I've used delay as a crutch and that's obviously better through an amp with an effects loop.  And I use a ton of gain, through multiple stages to make up for a lack of technique.

The thing about the Plexi 7 is it has acres of tone, and the breakup as it edges toward distortion sounds very authentic to me.  Just a really really nice sound.  I find I can play at quite tolerable volume levels and it encourages me to play, which for me personally is the most valuable thing of all.  I've got a great Guitar Rig 5 setup that I play through a stereo, but it rarely invites me to play, whereas the Plexi 7 sits there with an on/off switch, promising to give me a good session where I end up feeling good about myself.  Visitors to the house have been commenting about what a good sound I'm making and one of my friends asked if I gave guitar lessons.  I never knew anyone ask that when I was playing with the mega overdrive setup I had through my Rivera amp.

As I'm continuing my experiment I'm plugging a wide variety of FX pedals into the front end and coming to an understanding of what my new sound might be.  The weirdest thing is I'm using EMG81s and the tone is great.  I'm thinking if I experiment with some more toneful Seymour Duncans I might find myself with another major improvement.

slacker

crunchman said:

slacker said:

Gassage said:

Romany's are very tinny and farty IMO

Plexi's are a wonderous thing though.

The Romany Plus is very good with speaker and valve changes but it puts the price up. 

I played with various speakers and valves in my Romany Plus, and came to the conclusion that it sounded best with the stock Jensen mod and 6L6.

When I tried a Lazy J it was gone.  It's not in the same class as something like a Lazy J.  I've not played some of the other amps mentioned above like Carr but they are probably better as well.  Like I said above, with what I know now I'd prefer a Fender PRRI to the Cornell.  To me push pull power stages sound better than single ended ones.

I had a blackplate 6L6 and an alnico Tone Tubby in mine. Eventually I went back to Vox type amps. 

dgrobo2000

Cornell amps sound amazing.

matone

Is a Plexi 7 better with a 12" speaker ? Or is the 10" perfectly adequate ?

musteatbrain

Much better with a 12 inch speaker IMHO. I sold mine because of the 10 inch speaker.
I think the head version is a better amp

revsorg

I got my 10" Plexi 7 on the strength of playing through a 12" version and wish I'd got the 12" - but I feel very attached to my 10" amp, if I were upgrading it would be to get an external cab and another amp.

matone

Thanks,all good info !

johnnythefox

I had a cornell plexi 18/20 was great for the cream covers but struggled with cleans, I now use a romany plus and find it far more versatile takes pedals really well and its great at home levels.

dgrobo2000

I have a Cornell Romany with the following setup, Celestion G10 greenback speaker, JJ gold pin 12AX7 pre-amp tube and sovtek output tube. This setup gives the amp more headroom and produces an awesome clean and distorted sound.