1978 Traynor YGM3 Guitar Mate from our northern neighbors

Here's a bargain amp. A late 70's Traynor YGM-3 Guitar Mate!

These were built in Canada. I've worked on plenty of Traynor amps before and am quite fond of them. They are built to last and can be had for a cheapish price. Much like Jim Marshall who was motivated by building a cheaper amp than the Fender amps around London, Traynor did the same thing in 1963: let's build local, high quality affordable amps for the new music being made. All in the name of problem solving. All in the name of service. The best stuff is motivated by those 2 very important human things.

This amp is all hand wired just like a boutique amp. My client bought this on Craigslist for $400....

I believe this to be the Canadian response to the Fender Deluxe Reverb. It has a single 12" speaker, tremolo and reverb with a bright switch. The biggest differences are the lack of a power choke, no reverb driver transformer (cheaper to use a capacitor!) and a pair of 6BQ5/EL84 power tubes rather than the American 6V6. The result is it sounds like an English Deluxe Reverb, more chime and accented mids like a Vox.

Hand wired guts:

One of the nice things about working on these old Traynor amps is you don't even need to pull the chassis. You can remove the 4 bolts holding the top on and simply pull the hood off. Then you're ready to get to work! Though I can't help but think of brain surgery....

These amps boast the famous Mullard "Mustard" capacitors. Those are almost always still good so I'm leaving them alone. The amp hummed badly and sounded harsh. I knew right away what was up: bad filter caps and one dead power tube. Turns out one tube was completely dead, the other was very weak.

So a word about the tubes in these. They tend to get eaten alive. The new JJ or Sovtek / Electro Harmonix glass? You may experience shortened tube life. Those tubes are rated for around 300 volts. This amp boast around 420 volts! Luckily my client wanted more headroom so I just ordered some EL84M tubes from Sovtek. They are rated for 500v. They are the modern version of the 7189 tube. More for hi-fi like my old Fisher SA-100. Linear and clean. I find them to be very punchy, strong sounding tubes. They are a bit maligned by the guitar crowd, people prefer the sweeter tone of an EL84 but just keep in mind these are an option.

Cool Russian boxes!

 I re-capped it and added a bias pot. Due to the layout Traynor made the job so easy.... I used a 20K trim pot and changed the 22k bias resistor to a 15K cause the EL84M / 7189 biases a bit differently than a JJ EL84.

I also added a couple 1 ohm resistors from the cathodes (pin 3) of the EL84 tubes to ground. You'll read millivolts there which correspond to milliamps. 25mv=25ma. Easy and convenient:

I hate the bright switch in these. They use a .001 cap. It's like shaking a can of nails by your ear! I replaced that cap with a 100pf NOS silver mica cap. Now it adds a bit of smooth bite:

I ran it tonight with a set of JJ tubes running at 25ma each. I didn't get any red plate stuff but don't really trust them to last. The amp sounds great now. No hum at all unless you add that beautifully lush but humtastic reverb.

So if you want boutique quality at a crappy new amp price, don't turn your nose up to one of these. They can truly hold their own with the best of them. I actually like the rather mod styling too. Fender, Marshall and Ampeg went full industrial unattractive by this era. But these Traynor amps still have a touch of class. They look nice, and looks matter to me. If you buy one do keep in mind you'll want to get it checked out and possibly set it up with the beefier tubes. Unless you don't mind burning them up that is.

JB