Traynor YGM3

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Bear with me, not going political on y’all. Current events reminded me of past events…. From like 50 years ago, so be impressed at my advanced age I can still remember. This thread really is just about my Traynor YGM3….. and only my amp. So asking that no one makes this political.

It would appear the proposed tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports will be proceeding. Now, the reason I dare bring this up is it’s not the first time in history this has happened…. At least on Canadian imports. About 50+ years ago, while Nixon was still President, the U.S. issued tariffs on Canadian products. Not sure what all that included, but for sure on Electronics. Read that as including Traynor Amps being imported into the States. Which brings me to my 1974 Traynor YGM3.

September 1974 I walked into The Old Music Shoppe, a Mom and Pop in Galesburg Illinois. I was there to buy an Ovation Acoustic guitar. Purchased the guitar and also a Traynor YGM3.

Forty-ish years later I got the wild idea to find out the exact "Born On" date of my amp. Yes… I purchased it in 1974. But since it was a Mom and Pop, there’s no guarantee it hadn’t been sitting there for a year or more. So began the journey. What I found out was to bypass the tariff, they had YGM3’s destined for America….. assembled in America. What I read into what I learned was Pete Traynor could ship “Repair” parts to the States with no tariff but couldn’t ship fully assembled amps. As you'll read.... I sorta have a Unicorn, which is kinda pretty cool. So anyway, here’s the story from an employee at Traynor.

 

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Traynor YGM3 – 1974 – Assembled in Batavia NY

"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."

 

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I know there are a few folk here that own Traynor's. It'd be cool to here about them. Also if anyone has any stories on Pete Traynor, that could be fun to hear as well. I've gathered he was quite a character.