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

Yet another Fender Blues Junior!

Yup. These can possibly be the most popular tube amplifiers in the world at the moment. Really, as far as new tube amps that are factory mass produced, this series is the best bang for your buck. I wouldn't consider much else out there including Mesa, Marshall or Peavey. Why? By some miracle Fender stuck to Leo Fenders vision of having equipment that is easily serviceable. The other companies seem to have a hatred of service people, so I don't mess with them. I like making money see, not wasting time. In and out and get paid. With so many of these about I can afford to say no to a lot of new amps.

These and their ilk come through often. I just had a Hot Rod Deluxe yesterday. They always have the same problems. Solder joints crack and the input just falls apart. Yes, they use crap parts to keep the lights on. Who can blame them? Good thing is these are easily fixed and it's really easy to put a proper Switchcraft J12 jack in. It's so routine that I don't even keep the stock Fender jacks around. Those just suck so for $5 more I say keep your customers happy. Unless you are like our medical industry where it profits by keeping people sick. No, I have morals and a sense of decency.

Jack!:

These have 3 circuit boards. Pull them and re-solder every socket, pot, jack and ribbon connection. 90% of the time and you are ready to go for another 5 years.

When I was doing this a lot more I installed a lot of mods in these. Most were from this cat:

http://billmaudio.com/wp/

Good stuff. Worth the effort. I also installed carbon composition resistors and nicer caps in many over the years. Much to my surprise the effort was worth it. More 'vintage' sounding meaning just smoother and more musical. Rock bottom priced resistors and caps produce mediocre and rather harsh results. That being said stock these are just fine too.

This is a late 90's model. Still has the Eminence made speaker rather than the Jensen. This is a far nicer sounding speaker. I like these. Nothing special, just really good and full, not harsh like the Jensen tends to be.

Other improvements? Not really necessary but I have dropped in Hammond and Heyboer transformers before and the results were pleasing. Fuller body on both of those. More iron, better bass.

These amps are a positive holdover from what I call the EL84 revolution. Back in the 90's the shift went from big amps to smaller. The tube business was changing constantly with wild price fluctuations, a war in the former Yugoslavia eliminating the EI tube factory production and a growing demand for tube amps with a shrinking supply of good tubes. Sovtek made and still makes a decent EL84. We were bummed when EI stopped cause theirs was sonically superior. JJ took that chair, I like those just fine myself. Many boutique makers started building around the EL84 cause they were cheap and plentiful. It got to the point where I was bored of this tube. "Our amp is a sweet spot between a Vox, Fender Deluxe Reverb with a Marshall crunch blah blah....." Boring. Make something that doesn't try to please everyone please!

But I'm over that. today the EL84 is relatively cheap and plentiful still. Many clubs here in NYC have one of these little Blues Junior amps available for the back line and I'm always happy to see one. They kind of get out of the way of your expression which is what a good amp should do. I can always get my bag out of the speaker, clean or gritty.

I've never owned one myself but if I had to I would be just as happy. They kind of can't be beat! (Yo Fender, where's my endorsement??)

-J

Marshall Popular model 1930, circa early 70's

Here's an amp you don't see every day, a Marshall Popular 1930 model. It's a 10 watt 2x10" speaker amp. I've probably worked on 4 of these in the last 25 years, they are quite uncommon though not as rare as the really sought after and far more costly 18 watt 1974 model.

These apparently were only made for the European market so you'll need to either buy a step up transformer or replace the power transformer for domestic use. I know. Replacing a transformer is sacrilege. Whatever. Stick the original in a box and put it away until the day you sell the amp.

This came through with a problem all of them seem to have. Noise. Particularly buzz and lots of hiss. This particular amp was, um, 'converted' to an 18 watt model. A 6CA4 tube was added in place of the silicon diode rectifiers, the output tubes are the more desirable 6BQ5/EL84 tubes rather than ECL86 and another 12AX7 tube was added. Nice thing is all the socket holes are already there as these seem to share the same chassis as the 1974 model.

The intention of the job was good, the execution not so good. I did like the normal channel, it broke up immediately as a result of there actually being an extra gain stage.

So first thing to address was the hum. That was easy. change the filter caps and cathode caps. Hum gone. The challenging parts were: dead tremolo and buzzzzzzzzzzz hisssssssssssssssssss. Un-useable at low volumes. Turn it up and rock out and it's heavenly. You stop playing and you want to turn the amp off.

The tremolo usually dies from dead caps. You know, those 3 in a row typically ceramic caps. Tried that and no life. In this amp the cap going to ground on the tremolo stage was a .1 from the factory. I changed that to a .047 and started getting some oscillation. But not good enough. I noticed when the person modded this amp they changed the power supply resistors to higher values. My guess was they were as frustrated as I was about the buzz and this was an attempt to clean it up. I used the stock values and voom voom voom voom. Tremolo is roaring back to life. And....more buzz and hiss than before.

Yes, already tried new preamp tubes. Also changed load resistors, took out gain stage to see if the stock circuit was quiet. Nope. It all comes from the tremolo oscillator / gain stage. Pull that tube or alligator clip the signal to ground and it's quiet like a dead fish.

Also pulled all the pots and sanded the front of the chassis to tighten up the signal grounds. A minor improvement. Marshall used mechanical grounding in those days. Sometimes maybe in certain conditions, corrosion can happen and you get noise.

But that didn't solve the problem. Worked like a charm in other amps. Rats......

Time to resort to the forums. Type in Marshall Popular noise hiss.... Took me a while to find this problem addressed but I did find it. Someone post this question, a discussion followed that got heated and ugly as forums can do. (These amps are crap! No they aren't! Piss off! Moderators shut this down!). One person attributed the issue to hearsay about the phase inverter. Bollocks. But one person said this: "It's a flawed design. There is no gain stage between your guitar and the volume/tone controls thus causing excess noise." My first reaction was "WRONG!" Add gain, you add noise. This makes zero sense to me. And his comment generated no other comments. So being that it generated nothing and I was bored of this amp I figured he was on the right path.

So I tried it. Moved some wires around so it's more like the 18 watt (I've built a dozen of those, they are quiet!) and lo and behold, QUIET! Minimal hiss, no buzz, great sound.

Amp is loaded with the original Ceslestion 10" speakers. Always a bonus. I did wind up swapping out the power transformer just for ease of use. Plus, my client has a nice house with beautiful things. Having a step up is just kind of ugly. Which part did I use? The Mojo 18 watt power transformer. I did add a 100 ohm 25 watt dropping resistor between the rectifier and the first filter stage. This got it from the 350V to 325V range which is close to original.

So my take on these? Stock they really aren't that good. And the price people ask for these is stupid. Modded they are great. The complaints about them, noisy and thin sounding, are well founded. I, like most of us, prefer quiet and full sounding. They have the potential for that. But don't pay $2500-$3k for one. I'd sooner buy an 18 watt clone for what I want and spend the rest on a ticket to Italy. I would love to see more sanity in the vintage market. If these were great out of the box I'd happily pay what people ask. They are a cute little recording and club amp. When you've spent a lot then you buy into the anxiety of "will making it functional make me lose all my money????" To me something is only worth anything if it's useful. Fortunately my client likes things that work and sound awesome over just things to look at. What rocks stays, what sucks goes away. That's just sane. In the end, I really like this amp now. I wouldn't think twice about taking it on a gig. It really does give up a beautiful sound that is right between a Marshall and a good Vox. With my Fender guitars it's good and clear. Humbuckers it goes into full bodied overdrive without ever getting mushy.

-J