New Amp Day!

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MatchBookNotes

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Well, Gents it was an accidental find. I was running errands and went to a new music shop in town that i have never been in, they're an esp and schecter dealer which interested me. I asked them if they could order me in yada yada, then had him show me amps. He showed me a B52 112 60 watt, which is a cool amp btw, but was tres exspensive to drop cash on then and there. So I asked if they had used etc, they did, so he takes me to the back and shows me a 1967-69 traynor, a ygm-2, its dusty as fuck but they put new tubes in, he turns it on, the tremelo is just wangin, once he turns it off and we play with it, it sounds good, except there's some 'power sag' or some such due to either too much dust, or a bad biasing, but despite this, the tone is beautiful and it accepts over drive pedals wonderful, it has a kind of vox tone, and is point to point circuitry which is what i'm told (thanks light?) is the best to have. I fell in love and after like a half hour fucking around, I drop 50 bucks on it and they're calling me when its fixed, so... is it still new amp day even though its not in my possession?

In any case, rough and tumble and got a closed back. It was meant to be, its even giving me a tingling in my pants.

I tried finding a good page on them for you guys, but its not exactly going well.
I'll get pictures or something when I get it home.


Good Deal:
5 tubes.
25 watts
Reverb
Tremelo
Footswitch.
$249 + $30 in taxes.

I got tubed!
 
As long as it fixes up alright, it sounds like a rockin good deal. Congrats! post some pics once you have the beast.


Adam
 
yeah its got some cosmetic issues, but you don't judge the book by its cover.
and i shall post pictures. i can't wait to have it home to drive my landlord nuts.
They likre cream, so i'll have to learn some clapton.

Oh yeah photo from the internets:
1966_ygm-2_front__yga-2a.jpg
 
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got her home finally.
She looks like she's been around the block but she's got a mouth that'll make you melt. haha. 3 EL86's and 2 12AX7s I believe.
It only has the tremelo and the boost switch.
I'm letting her warm up before i put her through my paces.
 
tube amps are completely different creatures, holy crap, and they bite too! especially if they're old and you touch the ground by accident.
Are they any tube amps for dummies owner must knows?

It also feeds back if i'm infront of the damn thing and the volumes cranked. I Don't really get that with the solid state. Isn't that what hendrix did with his amps? Went up close and shook and rattled the guitar infront of the speakers to cause feedback?
 
MatchBookNotes said:
tube amps are completely different creatures, holy crap, and they bite too! especially if they're old and you touch the ground by accident.
Are they any tube amps for dummies owner must knows?

It also feeds back if i'm infront of the damn thing and the volumes cranked. I Don't really get that with the solid state. Isn't that what hendrix did with his amps? Went up close and shook and rattled the guitar infront of the speakers to cause feedback?
Click to expand...

Get it properly grounded! I can't believe they 'repaired' it without addressing any issues like that. Get a three prong cord added and have them make sure the grounding is right, you can really get hurt with that.


You are right on the feedback, it isn't exclusve to tube amps, but it may be that this amp and the guitar work together to make feebdack more likely. Hollowbodies in particular tend to feeback like crazy.

Sounds like you got a nice amp there, 25watts in a tube amp is just about right in my opinion, unless you are gigging and really need some loudness. The more you can get the volume opened up and pushing the tubes, the better they tend to sound, so doing so at a more reasonable volume (than a 100w fender twin for instance) is great.

Daav

Dave
 
Yeah...definitely get the three prong ground cord on there.

Also, is there a standby switch on it? I use mine for warming up and cooling down the tubes. If not, just give them at least a few minutes to warm up (I generally give mine about 15) and several minutes to "cool" before you shut it down.

Nice find man. :cool:
 
MatchBookNotes said:
3 EL86's and 2 12AX7s I believe.
Click to expand...

EL86's or EL84's? The specs I had seen for these called for 6BQ5 output tubes (6BQ5 being the american designation, and EL84 being the european one, I think). EL84's are much easier to find than EL86's I imagine.

Nice amp!
 
Dogbreath said:
and several minutes to "cool" before you shut it down.:
Click to expand...

how exactly do you think this works.... standby doesnt take the heater voltage away... so no cool down (or not much anyway)
 
Putting it on standby for a moment will leave the heaters on but disable the audio signal path so there should be no potential damage from a loud POP when you turn it off.

Are the power supply filter capacitors capacitors original? If so replacing them with new ones is advisable.
 
daav said:
Get it properly grounded! I can't believe they 'repaired' it without addressing any issues like that. Get a three prong cord added and have them make sure the grounding is right, you can really get hurt with that.


You are right on the feedback, it isn't exclusve to tube amps, but it may be that this amp and the guitar work together to make feebdack more likely. Hollowbodies in particular tend to feeback like crazy.

Sounds like you got a nice amp there, 25watts in a tube amp is just about right in my opinion, unless you are gigging and really need some loudness. The more you can get the volume opened up and pushing the tubes, the better they tend to sound, so doing so at a more reasonable volume (than a 100w fender twin for instance) is great.

Daav

Dave
Click to expand...

I asked about it that, apparently its not hard to do. It probably doesn't help that i touched it with the other guitar plugged into the other amp. It does have a standby that I keep 'on' or at least in standby mode until i switch it on, I've also noticed the grounding issue a bit with the bridge of my guitar, if my forearm hits it in the right way it stings a bit, but no other part bothers me.
I am a definite green horn here, but i tried to make myself as educated without having my own tech geek.

The way i figure if i need something loud enough to fill a large club(some open mics are in big clubs) there will be a mixer on hand so i can just mic the damn thing so everyone can hear the dynamic in the mixer and it will all be alright, i am definitely planning to hit up some open mics soon times, but i would like to get that grounding issue fixed. it has a grounding switch, and another two prong plug on the back, to be honest the guy i bought it from looked a bit... uhm well he's a metal head. I may be a bit of a hippie but my herb don't hit me like that, he knew what he was talking about but on a whole he wasn't giving me the full basket so to speak. nice guy though, and the shop offers free year's setup if you buy a guitar from them.

on the loudness it is sure as hell more than loud enough for my house. Four is plenty loud and six o'clock is pushing it. I tend to use my fuzz pedal to limit the sound a bit at those volumes so i don't get complaints but then my fuzz just sounds like crap.

I need a good OD pedal. I kinda like the boss dyna drive. it sounded good infront of the amp @ the store as did the blues driver, but they don't have bi-pass do they? I want to use more than one pedal without weakening the signal.

As to the el84/6 I couldn't read anything when i looked at them to inspect it.

"
Are the power supply filter capacitors capacitors original? If so replacing them with new ones is advisable. "

If you could elaborate that would be cool. I have a friend who is quite experienced at PCB sodering and computer stuff, i think if we put our minds together and such we could fix what you're talking about?
I really don't want to have to rely on a shop all the time if I can learn it and do it myself... unless it is far to complex. but its point to point so how hard can it be?


thanks, zaphod, I certainly am, its like figuring out a new girl friend.


sorry for rambling!
 
MatchBookNotes said:
Well, Gents it was an accidental find. I was running errands and went to a new music shop in town that i have never been in, they're an esp and schecter dealer which interested me. I asked them if they could order me in yada yada, then had him show me amps. He showed me a B52 112 60 watt, which is a cool amp btw, but was tres exspensive to drop cash on then and there. So I asked if they had used etc, they did, so he takes me to the back and shows me a 1967-69 traynor, a ygm-2, its dusty as fuck but they put new tubes in, he turns it on, the tremelo is just wangin, once he turns it off and we play with it, it sounds good, except there's some 'power sag' or some such due to either too much dust, or a bad biasing, but despite this, the tone is beautiful and it accepts over drive pedals wonderful, it has a kind of vox tone, and is point to point circuitry which is what i'm told (thanks light?) is the best to have. I fell in love and after like a half hour fucking around, I drop 50 bucks on it and they're calling me when its fixed, so... is it still new amp day even though its not in my possession?

In any case, rough and tumble and got a closed back. It was meant to be, its even giving me a tingling in my pants.

I tried finding a good page on them for you guys, but its not exactly going well.
I'll get pictures or something when I get it home.


Good Deal:
5 tubes.
25 watts
Reverb
Tremelo
Footswitch.
$249 + $30 in taxes.

I got tubed!
Click to expand...

I had one many years ago. It blew up. The repair guy said that those amps were famous for blowing up. Make sure it is cleaned well and don't keep it cranked all the time.

Good Luck
 
MatchBookNotes said:
I've also noticed the grounding issue a bit with the bridge of my guitar, if my forearm hits it in the right way it stings a bit, but no other part bothers me.
Click to expand...

Many (most?) amps of this vintage do not have three prong plugs. Somewhere on this amp there should be a switch that changes the polarity of the AC input, equivalant to turning the AC plug over. Changing the position of this switch may stop the shocking. If not, it may be dangerous to use.
 
apparently its in the proper position, but i don't exactly have access to a user manual... which would be awesome but holy feck how? does traynor have old manuals laying around?
 
MatchBookNotes said:
Are the power supply filter capacitors capacitors original? If so replacing them with new ones is advisable. "

If you could elaborate that would be cool. I have a friend who is quite experienced at PCB sodering and computer stuff, i think if we put our minds together and such we could fix what you're talking about?
I really don't want to have to rely on a shop all the time if I can learn it and do it myself... unless it is far to complex. but its point to point so how hard can it be?
Click to expand...

Maybe not hard but dangerous in that these capacitors are used in the circuit that develop the high DC voltages (300V+) needed for tubes to work, and the voltage can be present even when when the power is off. I recommend against trying to replace them yourself. In addition to the danger, finding exact replacements is unlikely - but a good technician might be able to find and install equivalents.

According to the schematic I found there are three 40 microfarad power supply caps, all rated to work up to 450V. Such capacitors often are in metal or cardboard "cans" next to the tubes. Sometimes more than one or even all are in one such can. If you see something that looks like that, look for evidence of overheating or leakage. Failure of one of these caps can result in loss of volume or a constant AC hum, but has been known to fry the power transformer, which would likely be impossible to replace economically.
 
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