In the past couple weeks it has seemed there are a few more of us here that either have owned or still own one or more Traynor Amps. Let’s see them and tell us a little about them..... I'll start.
Bought this YGM3, 20watt, single 12" speaker..... way back in 1974. Little mom and pop music shop in Galesburg Illinois. Price was around 250 bucks. Has a couple EL84 and 4 - 12AX7's. On board tank spring reverb and tremolo. Has a Treble Boost switch... similar to an AC30. Master Volume, Bass, Tremble pots. No gain. Mine did come with the three wire power cord. Many in the early 70's came with two wire..... which made it necessary to "mod" the amp with a three wire power cord. I have swapped out the original Marsland speaker for a Celestion V30. It has been re-tubed and the blasting cap capacitors have been replaced with 21st century caps. It's a great sounding amp.
Now here is where it gets interesting. I have a tag that claims my Canadian amp was built in Batavia New York.... not Canada. So I did some research. Found a guy on the Traynor Forum that was able to get some answers direct from Traynor...... And this is what he told me.
"It's actually turned into quite the interesting story trying to gather information on it, a few of us have learned some fascinating things about our history that had been largely forgotten over time in doing so.
There has been much discussion about the plate that reads Batavia. It's not that we don't believe you, but most of us here that were around back then didn't even know that we had done that and wanted to see it with their own eyes.
We briefly (72-75) made some amps there, but they were more assembled than truly built there, it saved us money with the Government in some form or other to "build" some larger sellers in the USA that would be for sale there. As best he can recall, only the YGM-3 was ever built there, only for 3 years, and only for sale in the USA. So in other words, there is at most a few hundred American made Traynor amps in existence, and you definitely have one of them. The guy I'm talking with worked in this Batavia outlet, and back then he took the amp head that we made, had the Batavia plates made locally down there and stamped the serial numbers onto them himself and made the wooden enclosures State-side and installed the Canadian made head into it. So technically your amp head was made in Canada and the cabinet was made in the USA. He also said that to further differentiate the US made from Canadian made amps (this process started before we started making Batavia labeled plates) he intentionally made the serial numbers NOT follow our normal convention. In other words, the number is just a number and can't be used to identify it's age. Thinking ahead he did have the thought to mark them still. He told me that he used a rubber stamp with the actual date he made the amps and stamped it onto the back of the speaker. So if yours has the original speaker in it, take the back off and look for a small date stamp somewhere, that will be the date the amp was built, not the speaker." - (Shale Leach researched this)
So at the end of the day, it would appear I have a bit of a Unicorn here.
Bought this YGM3, 20watt, single 12" speaker..... way back in 1974. Little mom and pop music shop in Galesburg Illinois. Price was around 250 bucks. Has a couple EL84 and 4 - 12AX7's. On board tank spring reverb and tremolo. Has a Treble Boost switch... similar to an AC30. Master Volume, Bass, Tremble pots. No gain. Mine did come with the three wire power cord. Many in the early 70's came with two wire..... which made it necessary to "mod" the amp with a three wire power cord. I have swapped out the original Marsland speaker for a Celestion V30. It has been re-tubed and the blasting cap capacitors have been replaced with 21st century caps. It's a great sounding amp.
Now here is where it gets interesting. I have a tag that claims my Canadian amp was built in Batavia New York.... not Canada. So I did some research. Found a guy on the Traynor Forum that was able to get some answers direct from Traynor...... And this is what he told me.
"It's actually turned into quite the interesting story trying to gather information on it, a few of us have learned some fascinating things about our history that had been largely forgotten over time in doing so.
There has been much discussion about the plate that reads Batavia. It's not that we don't believe you, but most of us here that were around back then didn't even know that we had done that and wanted to see it with their own eyes.
We briefly (72-75) made some amps there, but they were more assembled than truly built there, it saved us money with the Government in some form or other to "build" some larger sellers in the USA that would be for sale there. As best he can recall, only the YGM-3 was ever built there, only for 3 years, and only for sale in the USA. So in other words, there is at most a few hundred American made Traynor amps in existence, and you definitely have one of them. The guy I'm talking with worked in this Batavia outlet, and back then he took the amp head that we made, had the Batavia plates made locally down there and stamped the serial numbers onto them himself and made the wooden enclosures State-side and installed the Canadian made head into it. So technically your amp head was made in Canada and the cabinet was made in the USA. He also said that to further differentiate the US made from Canadian made amps (this process started before we started making Batavia labeled plates) he intentionally made the serial numbers NOT follow our normal convention. In other words, the number is just a number and can't be used to identify it's age. Thinking ahead he did have the thought to mark them still. He told me that he used a rubber stamp with the actual date he made the amps and stamped it onto the back of the speaker. So if yours has the original speaker in it, take the back off and look for a small date stamp somewhere, that will be the date the amp was built, not the speaker." - (Shale Leach researched this)
So at the end of the day, it would appear I have a bit of a Unicorn here.
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