# NAD! Traynor Content!



## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

Well, new USED amp day. I sold my trusty YGL-3 combo because it was just too damned loud and too damned heavy and I replaced it with a YGM-2 combo that's a bit of an oddity. It's an early model from 1967 that is a bit different in terms of circuit than the earlier and later ones. I bought it from my amp tech who said that it basically has the first preamp tube and second preamp tubes before the tone stack, whereas later ones had the tone stack moved to between the two preamp stages. I don't know much about this circuit mumbo-jumbo and I might be misquoting him, but the idea is that the second gain stage gets hit by a clean signal from the first gain stage without any electronics in between to attenuate the highs or lows at all, resulting in more overall gain and crunch.

Whether or not this is true, or accurate or whatever, I can say this much: this amp flat out rocks! I've had an opportunity once or twice to let my YGL rip, and I get some nice crunch and a little bit of compression, but nothing like this. This YGM is much closer to my Marshall in terms of overdriven tone. The amp gets louder til around 4 or so on the dial and from there on, it's pretty much just plain saturation.

I've only owned it for about 30 minutes now, so I need to do a lot more fiddling before I can really say what's what, but the first few power chords I hit really impressed me. Definitely enough volume to keep up with a drummer and a great vintage tone that really lets my LP shine.

Here's a pic. I'm sure I'll have lots more soon.


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## zontar (Oct 25, 2007)

Cool looking amp--sounds like you're enjoying it.

There's just something about old amps.
It's a good thing too.


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

That's what the logo looks like. The one for my YGM-2 is missing. And is that the original switch for the boost/treble? Mine has a slider. I think mine is a '69, I'll have to check the tube circuit to see how it's set up.
http://i1000.photobucket.com/albums/af129/Electraglide49/Amps and things/BabyChamp001.jpg
I swapped the original tubes for Mesa Boogies. And I usually plug into the middle input and have the volume about 3. Has a nice mellow sound to it, especially with the hollow and semi-hollow guitars. And, like Zontar said, ther's something about old amps. You'll enjoy it.


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## Budda (May 29, 2007)

Lies, it's a Trayno! Haha looks good man. When you say "vintage tone", can you link me to a clip of what you're talking about? i had a Kustom tube 12A that I gave to my little brother as I wasn't using it, and I'd describe it as a vintage overdrive tone; but I have no idea what amps would sound like that. It sounds good for 60's and 70's tones IMO, but that's going with what little I know about the tones of those years.


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## al3d (Oct 3, 2007)

VERY nice man... next time i see one of those i wanna grab it..


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## tonydawe (Feb 25, 2009)

i would have to say trayYES to that amp!
with there being three inputs, could "jump channels" by plugging into the first input and putting a small patch cable into the other two? i know it's not a two channel amp, just wondering...


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## Addictedtokaos (Jul 14, 2010)

I love NUAD! Mine was early this summer. I love my New to ME Rectoverb!  

Congrats on the NUAD!


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

tonydawe said:


> i would have to say trayYES to that amp!
> with there being three inputs, could "jump channels" by plugging into the first input and putting a small patch cable into the other two? i know it's not a two channel amp, just wondering...


I don't know if that would work, since all 3 inputs are in parallel as far as I can tell, unlike 4-hole Marshalls, but I don't know since I haven't actually tried it. I know the 1st input is a low and the other 2 are highs, but other than that, I'm pretty in the dark about this amp so far.



Budda said:


> Lies, it's a Trayno! Haha looks good man. When you say "vintage tone", can you link me to a clip of what you're talking about? i had a Kustom tube 12A that I gave to my little brother as I wasn't using it, and I'd describe it as a vintage overdrive tone; but I have no idea what amps would sound like that. It sounds good for 60's and 70's tones IMO, but that's going with what little I know about the tones of those years.


I'm talking mostly about early Clapton and Stones tones. Like the Beano album or early Cream (both Gibsons into JTMs) and then 70's era Stones stuff like Sticky and Exile. I love the tone on Can't you Hear me Knockin', Moonlight Mile and Sway. For me, a good measure of an amp's ability to sound vintage is to plug in, turn up until it starts to grind and rip into something like Brown Sugar. If those opening Major and Suspended chords sound the way they should, you're golden. I've heard lots of band trying to cover Stones or early AC/DC and they're using Mesas and stuff, which are great amps and can be set to do vintage with a lot of tweaking, but these guys are running them wide-open and it just plain sounds wrong.

I'll try to record some clips of the Trayno vs. the Marshall tonight or this weekend and put them up. I suspect they might be pretty close.



Electraglide said:


> That's what the logo looks like. The one for my YGM-2 is missing. And is that the original switch for the boost/treble? Mine has a slider. I think mine is a '69, I'll have to check the tube circuit to see how it's set up.
> http://i1000.photobucket.com/albums/af129/Electraglide49/Amps and things/BabyChamp001.jpg
> I swapped the original tubes for Mesa Boogies. And I usually plug into the middle input and have the volume about 3. Has a nice mellow sound to it, especially with the hollow and semi-hollow guitars. And, like Zontar said, ther's something about old amps. You'll enjoy it.


As far as I know, it's all original. It even still has a 2-prong cord (!). Here's a gutshot from teh last owner. Looks like most of the electronics are original too, but the amp is pretty darned quiet and everything seems to be working fine, so I'll just keep my fingers crossed.


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## traynor_garnet (Feb 22, 2006)

The difference in the circuit is probably due to this: the YGM -2 doesn't have reverb. The Guitar Mate was the cheaper version of the YGM-1 Guitar Mate Reverb and was dropped when Traynor introduced the YGM-3 Guitar Mate Reverb.


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

traynor_garnet said:


> The difference in the circuit is probably due to this: the YGM -2 doesn't have reverb. The Guitar Mate was the cheaper version of the YGM-1 Guitar Mate Reverb and was dropped when Traynor introduced the YGM-3 Guitar Mate Reverb.


Sorry, TG, I wasn't clear enough. The circuit of this amp is different from other YGM-2s as well. My tech has another YGM-2 on hand and the preamp circuits are slightly different. He tried contacting Yorkville to find a schematic for this amp and they didn't have one on hand. I'll have to email him for more info (again, I don't know jack about this stuff), but the difference was between v1 and v2, so it wouldn't have anything to do with the reverb circuit which is further down the line, right?


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

http://i1000.photobucket.com/albums/af129/Electraglide49/Amps and things/YGM-21966.jpg
http://i1000.photobucket.com/albums/af129/Electraglide49/Amps and things/YGM-21969.jpg
http://i1000.photobucket.com/albums/af129/Electraglide49/Amps and things/YGM-2003.jpg
Here's some schematics I got from Yorkville this spring. Hopefully they're readable and helpfull. And I was wondering, how many letters/numbers are in your serial#? Mine are hard to read but looks like a letter and two numbers. 
From what I've found out about the logo, some were sent to Traynor without the 'R' but used anyway. And as far as I know, the YGM-1 is reverb, YGM-2 is tremelo and the YGM-3 is both. I havn't tried jumping the inputs, hate to cook a circut, each has it's own sound. I still have the 2 prong cord on mine, jury rigged a ground circuit to eliminate a buzz. 
As far as "tone" goes, it sounds the way I remember bands sounding from the late '60s/early '70s in small clubs on the west-coast.


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## Jamrod (Dec 6, 2008)

Nice amp Hollowbody. Congrats! (Nice photos too!)

The YGM-1 had both reverb and tremolo but was slightly less wattage than the YGM-2, YGM-3, and YGM-4. The YGMs 1 and 2 were produced simultaneously, then were more or less consolidated as the YGM-3 around '69. The YGM-4 debuted two or three years after that and was produced simultaneously with the YGM-3 until about '79. That's my understanding of the timeline anyway.


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

Electraglide said:


> http://i1000.photobucket.com/albums/af129/Electraglide49/Amps and things/YGM-21966.jpg
> http://i1000.photobucket.com/albums/af129/Electraglide49/Amps and things/YGM-21969.jpg
> http://i1000.photobucket.com/albums/af129/Electraglide49/Amps and things/YGM-2003.jpg
> Here's some schematics I got from Yorkville this spring. Hopefully they're readable and helpfull. And I was wondering, how many letters/numbers are in your serial#? Mine are hard to read but looks like a letter and two numbers.
> ...


I think mine is like the second one you posted:









The first one has the treble and bass controls before v2 (along with the treble boost and volume):









Whereas the first one has v1>treb boost>volume>v2>treble/bass pots. Because the treble and bass pots (unless full up) cut the signal in those specify frequencies, the signal hitting v2 isn't as strong as it is in the other circuit, which results in less saturation of the preamp. At least that's how I understand it. 

But yeah, my YGM absolutely rips. On 4, a power chord cuts like a Ginsu and after that it's just more and more saturation.


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

Electraglide said:


> I was wondering, how many letters/numbers are in your serial#? Mine are hard to read but looks like a letter and two numbers.


Serial on mine is a letter followed by 3 numbers. I've tried to look around to see what year it is for sure, but the info online refers to 4-digit #s for YGM-2s, but the early ones has a 0 followed by 3 more digits. If I follow the logic of replacing the 0 with the letter in my serial #, I end up with a very early YGM, one of the first 100 or so built.



Electraglide said:


> And is that the original switch for the boost/treble? Mine has a slider.


Having taken a closer look at it, it looks like the switch is a replacement.

Here's some more pics.





































As you can see, I've settled on 8 for volume. Beyond that, it just gets a bit too fizzy. That might be alleviated with a new speaker (I'm thinking a Greenback, natch) but for now 8 seems nice to me. Gives me a lot of grind and I can still roll back the volume for some clean stuff. I've got the treble boost on and the treble knob at 12 o'clock and the bass at about 1:30 or so. Trem off, who needs that anyway??? 

I know it's still the honeymoon phase, but I'm really liking this amp. It'll give my Marshall a run for it's money in competition for my playing time.


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