Brunetti Pleximan - Anyone tried one yet?

Teetonetal

Been a long term admirer of the Singleman, but this looks really good too..

Any experiences yet?

simonk

Sam Vilo sounds good through one.

Teetonetal

Yeah, saw his vids.. but he pretty much sounds the same through everything. 

timmysoft

Anything brunetti is fucking awesome!

Teetonetal

which amp have you got @timmysoft?

strtdv

IIRC he has a Maranello.

Anyone who appreciates the sound of an SG with P90s has good taste in my book!

timmysoft

I've got the mk1 Maranello, it's a belter! I've also had the 059 and the xlr evo 2, they are definitely my flavour

Teetonetal

I nearly bought a Maranello couple of years back. Missed out as I thought too long.

There's an mc2 for sale now which is tempting.. but these singleman and pleximan heads seem so good..

timmysoft

I'd love an mc2, but the maranello suits my needs right now, it nails the spanky fender cleans and the drive tone is jaw dropping, it's like a tighter, brighter and more focused rectifier tone. I changed the speaker to a greenback, but the stick Jensen was pretty decent.

Jeremiah

I've been intrigued by the Metropolitan; looks like it could be a high quality valve combo in a very light and compact package.

BGG

The Pleximan gets reviewed in this months Guitarist magazine. Made me do some Googling, sounds like a great amp, I really like the sound clips.

BGG

As the original poster asked, has anyone played a Pleximan yet ?

timmysoft

Yes and it was bloody great, as are all brunetti amps!

BGG

Thanks @timmysoft I may have to scratch this itch

Teetonetal

@BGG They are bloody great amps, go sctatch that itch. Musik-Produktive were by far the cheapest place when I ordered mine in Dec.

Quick overview:

Clean channel is pretty basic, it's volume - tone and dense switch. The clean is perfectly usable even with with such a basic control set. The tone control is pretty reactive, and I find best reults between 10 and 2 o'clock, with 12 being neutral. Headroom is obviously affected by the 5w/50w poweramp switch, but with 50w I am easily beating my band.  Dense control is a good one for singlecoils, it gives the amp a mid boost, and brings more body to the tone. nice if you want a clean solo. With HBs it lowers the headroom too.

Channel 20 is voiced on a modern 80's 90's plexi sound. Here you have bass mid treble controls, as well as extra, hotrod and mellow. I really like the voicing on this channel, it's easy to dial in a great crunch sound, that can be boosted with TS or Klon type. Flicking to extra is a bit like the dense switch on the clean, it makes the channel bigger sounding. Hotrod, adds a load of gain and a bit of mid, it's good with HBs, but for my taste a bit fizzy with SCs.

The mellow switch affects the EQ controls when Hotrod or Extra are engaged.

There is also a Clean Boost with level control that works with both c1 and c2.

Finally the amp is 5w/50w switchable and has a footswitch for Boost on off, CH1/CH2 and hotrod on/off. There is also a jack for dense on the amp as well. It's possible to hook up the footswitch outs to a looper like G2 or ES-8 so that you can patch change the lot.

I find it quite a bright amp, I have a Vox 2x12-NT cab, which has Celestion G1230H speakers which I think are also a bit too bright for this amp. Brunetti recommends the WGS vintage 30 or Celestion g1265h I think.  With my setup I find a les paul or p90 loaded tele work better, but a different cab will bring different results.

What else to know? It's very quiet, looks cool and has a tube buffered serial fx loop, that sounds very, very nice with a Boss dd500.  

Here is the guitarist video & review 

John_A

That sounds VERY good indeed!

BGG

Cheers @Teetonetal

That was an excellent review and write up, really sound like the perfect upgrade from my Deluxe Reverb (which I love)

The Guitarist review is what got me interested, sounded good on paper then check the video out and was sold. I went onto checking out some other videos on YouTube and couldn't find a bad one

Cheers for taking the time out for that and your PM, time to start moving some gear on I think

kjdowd

Very interested in this. The pedal show guys were saying that Dave Kilminsters live tone through his Brunetti was the best they had heard, and the pleximan looks fantastic.

Teetonetal

kjdowd said:

Very interested in this. The pedal show guys were saying that Dave Kilminsters live tone through his Brunetti was the best they had heard, and the pleximan looks fantastic.

Dave is using a Brunetti customworks Mercury, super expensive amp, would love to try one. 

thomasross20

@Teetonetal and others...!

Seriously considering this or the Singleman Head... what do you think? 
Alternatives are Victory V30 / V40... 

Teetonetal

@thomasross20 I love mine. Since I wrote the above review, I've used it at some fairly big gigs, mic'ed and unmic'ed and it just sounds exactly like I want. Classic Rock, but with a slight modern slant.

It depends I suppose on how you want to use the amp. I hate having to use dirt pedals, I like my board to be full of fun stuff, so I like an amp that sounds good and is versatile. Pleximan has this in spades.

I use the dirt channel set for a crunch, that cleans up with volume control, Then as the clean boost and Hot rod options are foot switchable, I get 3 more sounds on top for solos (Clean boost - Hot Rod - Hot Rod & Clean boost).

The clean channel is really nice, I have a dd500 in the loop and it just shines. Headroom is good in 50w mode. But I don't use any dirt pedals with it, so can't comment there.

Over time, I have started to use my HB loaded guitars with it, mainly due to the VOX 2x12 G12-30h loaded cab I have. It's a little bright for SC guitars. HBs add in some warmth. I just got a WGS veteran 30 as Marco recommended that speaker for SC.

Here is a quick track I made using the pleximan. Important to note is that's it's running through a two notes torpedo and attenuated to 0dbs. Cab sim is via Wall of Sound 3, which I don't like much. I was really just messing with the tonal recall delay and not bothered much about amp sounds.




The singleman is a different beast. It's a clean amp designed for pedals. Using the attenuation you can get it to breakup but getting a balance between volume rolled off clean and nice dirt is hard, but if you like pedal dirt, it could be a good option.

Give Brunetti UK a call and see if you can find one of each to test.

I also looked at the V30 and 40, but internet reviews and lack of availability put me off.