# Major Vintage Traynor Score Today!



## traynor_garnet (Feb 22, 2006)

I’ve owned a ton of rare early Traynor stuff. More tube rectified bassmasters than I can remember, three tube rectified bassmates, a Dynabass, and a Rotomaster (leslie speaker). Most of this stuff I was forced to sell while I was a student. 

The one thing I have never owned, however, is a YHI-1 Amp-Mate Reverb. Until today! This all came up on the local Kijiji yesterday. I saw it about 20 minutes after it was posted, instantly contacted the seller saying I would take it, and asked to come over and pick it up right away. He said he wasn’t available until today but I could come over in the afternoon. For the last 24 hours I have been paranoid that somebody else was going to throw money at him and scoop this from me.

All this equipment has had one owner since it was bought new in 1965/66! The 2x12 is one of the earliest I have seen (wrap around corners like the earliest heads, no serial number or badge). The tube rectified head is running what look to be the original Phillips tubes and is completely unmodified. As for the Amp-mate reverb, these were only made for one year 1965/66 and I know of only two others in existence! I have no idea how many were made, but it is stupid rare.



I have some tough decisions to make as I now own three tube rectified bassmasters and matching 2x12 cabs. The amp-mate will never leave my hands 



I still cannot believe I found this in my town!


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## bigboki (Apr 16, 2015)

congratulations!


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## Moot (Feb 15, 2009)

It couldn't have happened to a more likely person!

Awesome score, congratulations!


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## Frenchy99 (Oct 15, 2016)

Congrats !!!

Man was I tempted yesterday....


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## Budda (May 29, 2007)

Dude great score. I have never even heard of that one.

I'd love to spend some good time with a vintage traynor.


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## Adcandour (Apr 21, 2013)

Sweet - can we hear it?


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## traynor_garnet (Feb 22, 2006)

adcandour said:


> Sweet - can we hear it?


Poke your head out the door and I will crank it LOL

TG


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## traynor_garnet (Feb 22, 2006)

I am trying to upload some more pics of the Amp-Mate Reverb but tiny pic isn't working.

It's a really interesting unit. I don't have an on/off switch to turn off the reverb so the verb is permanently on. When I turn down the reverb to 0, I get no volume.

That said, you can run an amp using only the powered on amp-mate as the sole speaker cab (just as the official Traynor/Yorkville site suggests). I wondered if it would work as a typical passive speaker cab. Nope! I turned off the amp mate, hit two notes on my guitar and heard nothing, so I immediately turned everything off. It is weird that you can run it as your only cab but it needs to be powered on. I am not sure how the amp "sees" the speaker.

The speaker is a bit odd too. It has a Jensen logo on it and two speaker codes (12CCR8 and DWK5). The last one seems like a Marsland code to me but I could be wrong. I seem to recall that Marsland had the rights to label some of their speakers "Jensen" for a brief time.


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## traynor_garnet (Feb 22, 2006)




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## traynor_garnet (Feb 22, 2006)




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## nonreverb (Sep 19, 2006)

That's a huge score Steve! Congrats!


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## bolero (Oct 11, 2006)

awesome!!


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## jb welder (Sep 14, 2010)

traynor_garnet said:


> you can run an amp using only the powered on amp-mate as the sole speaker cab (just as the official Traynor/Yorkville site suggests). I wondered if it would work as a typical passive speaker cab. Nope! I turned off the amp mate, hit two notes on my guitar and heard nothing, so I immediately turned everything off. It is weird that you can run it as your only cab but it needs to be powered on. I am not sure how the amp "sees" the speaker.


Can you link that info? I couldn't find it on the Traynor site.
To me it looks like a re-amp with reverb. I'm guessing it has some sort of load resistor at the input (maybe the bigger brown one?) and then sends a sample of that signal to the reverb and small power amp. So when you turn it off, there is still the load for your head (I hope) but no sound from it's own power amp. So no direct connection from the input jack to the speaker.
In the yorkville history pdf, it sounds like you would run your head to both a cab _and _the amp-mate, and use the amp-mates footswitch to turn the effect on and off?
Check the resistance at the input jack, that will tell you what kind of load is being presented to your head. 
In any case, if you are running only this unit as a load, I'd be wary of playing the head at high volumes.


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## traynor_garnet (Feb 22, 2006)

jb welder said:


> Can you link that info? I couldn't find it on the Traynor site.
> To me it looks like a re-amp with reverb. I'm guessing it has some sort of load resistor at the input (maybe the bigger brown one?) and then sends a sample of that signal to the reverb and small power amp. So when you turn it off, there is still the load for your head (I hope) but no sound from it's own power amp. So no direct connection from the input jack to the speaker.
> In the yorkville history pdf, it sounds like you would run your head to both a cab _and _the amp-mate, and use the amp-mates footswitch to turn the effect on and off?
> Check the resistance at the input jack, that will tell you what kind of load is being presented to your head.
> In any case, if you are running only this unit as a load, I'd be wary of playing the head at high volumes.


Here is the link to the Traynor legacy products info: Traynor Amps

Notice it states that the Amp-Mate was replaced by the newly released YT-12 cab and TR-1 reverb unit. This suggests that the YT-12 didn't exist when the Amp-mate reverb was in production, and therefore the two units couldn't have been meant to run in tandem.

I was speaking with another guy who owns one and he told me that the YHI-1 has a load resistor that the main amp 'sees' as a speaker. The voltage that the main amp puts across this resistor is lowered and used as the input signal for theYHI-1. This seems to support your "re-amp" idea if I understand you correctly.

When you caution against running the Amp-mate alone, are you worried of blowing that large resistor or it's speaker? At any rate, I am only running it in tandem with my YT-12 so that I error on the side of safety.

Thanks so much for your input. There is basically no info on these things.

TG


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## jb welder (Sep 14, 2010)

traynor_garnet said:


> When you caution against running the Amp-mate alone, are you worried of blowing that large resistor or it's speaker? At any rate, I am only running it in tandem with my YT-12 so that I error on the side of safety.


My worry is that the load resistor across the input jack appears to be a 330 ohm. So if you are using only the YHI-1 solely, as a load for a head, there is concern for the head's output transformer.
Sounds like you are using it along with an appropriate load, so no worries.


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## KapnKrunch (Jul 13, 2016)

Super rare. Way to go!


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## traynor_garnet (Feb 22, 2006)

jb welder said:


> My worry is that the load resistor across the input jack appears to be a 330 ohm. So if you are using only the YHI-1 solely, as a load for a head, there is concern for the head's output transformer.
> Sounds like you are using it along with an appropriate load, so no worries.


Ok, I only ran it solo for about 20 seconds to see if it would work. I will only use it when also simultaneously hooked to a proper cab.

I am dying to know how an 8 ohm cab coupled with the 330 ohm load in the Amp-Mate is suddenly safe, but fear I have taken more than my fair share of your time and suspect the answer will ultimately be way above my head anyway! 

Thanks so much,
TG


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## LexxM3 (Oct 12, 2009)

8 ohms in parallel with 330 ohms is 7.8 ohms -- close enough impedance match to 8 ohms for horseshoes and tube amplifiers.


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## High/Deaf (Aug 19, 2009)

That 330 ohm load is like taking a voltage reading with a DVM. You aren't really loading the circuit down so you aren't changing much of the original signal/sound as you tap onto the speaker cable, you are just sensing the signal to be re-amped. But as @jb welder mentioned, probably not wise to run only the 'verb box. That would be similar to running your main amp with no speaker at all.

This was an idea before it's time. With a cranked amp, it looks like you would be adding reverb to the distorted signal, something we're just coming to terms with in the 2000's. No one was thinking about time based effects after distortion in the 60s or 70s. Hell, we were just trying to get distortion figured out.


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## traynor_garnet (Feb 22, 2006)

Cool, thanks for the info everyone! It does sound good. I'm going replace the speaker in it to see if, like most Traynors, there is an improvement. 

TG


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## traynor_garnet (Feb 22, 2006)

So I was rereading this old thread and I am wondering if it would be OK to run this unit off of the headphone out of an amp. I know some headphones are as high as 600 ohms, so it would seem the 330 ohm load on the Ampmate should be fine to run a headphone out into.

Thoughts? 

TG


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## jb welder (Sep 14, 2010)

Sounds good to me, any headphone amp should be able to drive 330 ohms.


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## traynor_garnet (Feb 22, 2006)

jb welder said:


> Sounds good to me, any headphone amp should be able to drive 330 ohms.


Thanks so much for the reply! I want to run it out of the headphone jack of a Boss Waza Tube Amp Expander. I just wanted to make sure I wouldn't be stressing the solid state power amp to much.

If you come down to Mrs. Fable's Tiny Town I will buy you a beer. 

TG


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## High/Deaf (Aug 19, 2009)

traynor_garnet said:


> Thanks so much for the reply! I want to run it out of the headphone jack of a Boss Waza Tube Amp Expander. I just wanted to make sure I wouldn't be stressing the solid state power amp to much.
> 
> If you come down to Mrs. Fable's Tiny Town I will buy you a beer.
> 
> TG


The only way to stress a SS power amp is to load it below it's rated output impedance. Depending on how hard you drive the amp and how well the amp is made, even a slightly smaller load impedance can stress it. Saw this all the time with power amps being bridged.

Because bridging forces the amps output devices and power supply to near maximum levels, reducing the load below rated really strains those components and usually the weakest one blows. Here's the specs for a Bryston 4B :

_Solid-state stereo power amplifier. Output power: 250W continuous into 8 ohms (24dBW), 400Wpc rms continuous into 4 ohms (23dBW); 800W continuous into 8 ohms in bridged mode (29dBW)._

Note that running in stereo, you can reduce the load to 4 ohms on either or both sides. In bridged (mono) mode, you get a lot more power (800 W @ 8 ohms, compared to 250 W x2 @ 8 ohms) but you absolutely should not run the amp in bridged mode at less than 8 ohms. It would try to produce 1600 watts at 4 ohms and that's what kills the output devices and/or the power supply. They just aren't designed for that much energy dissipation.


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## traynor_garnet (Feb 22, 2006)

High/Deaf said:


> The only way to stress a SS power amp is to load it below it's rated output impedance. Depending on how hard you drive the amp and how well the amp is made, even a slightly smaller load impedance can stress it. Saw this all the time with power amps being bridged.


Both of the Boss Waza's main speaker cabinet outputs (running in parallel) are running into a 8 ohm 2x12 cab . The line outs are hitting studio monitors. The head phone out is running into the YHI-1 Reverbmate. 

The Boss power amp wants 4 ohms minimum, so if I understand your post correctly I should be safe doing what I am doing. 

Thanks for you post!

TG


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## High/Deaf (Aug 19, 2009)

traynor_garnet said:


> Both of the Boss Waza's main speaker cabinet outputs (running in parallel) are running into a 8 ohm 2x12 cab . The line outs are hitting studio monitors. The head phone out is running into the YHI-1 Reverbmate.
> 
> The Boss power amp wants 4 ohms minimum, so if I understand your post correctly I should be safe doing what I am doing.
> 
> ...


No problems that I can see.

The line out is feeding a high-Z input, exactly as it should be. I don't know anything about the Reverbmate, but I would assume it is at least 600 ohms input impedance, so no problems there. Headphone outs are usually better at driving lower impedances than a line-out will be. If your reverb signal is clean and not clipping, it's fine, IMO.

The big issue is you just don't want to go below 4 ohms connecting to the main speaker out. At quiet volumes, you'd still be OK but if you are working the amp, that can hurt it (trying to source too much current).

{edited} You could also run the main speaker out unloaded (with nothing connected) and not hurt it - using the Waza as a dummy load for recording or something. SS power sections are fine with that while you would not want to do that with a tube power output.


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## traynor_garnet (Feb 22, 2006)

High/Deaf said:


> No problems that I can see.
> 
> I don't know anything about the Reverbmate, but I would assume it is at least 600 ohms input impedance, so no problems there. Headphone outs are usually better at driving lower impedances than a line-out will be. If your reverb signal is clean and not clipping, it's fine, IMO.


It was designed to run from the second "speaker out" jack. The first thing the input 'sees' is a 330 ohm resistor and then that is passed on to the units tube power amp and speaker (see your post #19 above).

Thanks again, I really appreciate the knowledge.


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## jb welder (Sep 14, 2010)

traynor_garnet said:


> If you come down to Mrs. Fable's Tiny Town I will buy you a beer.


You must mean that crazy dame Mrs. Falbo


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## traynor_garnet (Feb 22, 2006)

Argh, stupid autocorrect! 



jb welder said:


> You must mean that crazy dame Mrs. Falbo


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