1974 Traynor
YGM-3 Guitarmate
I had been wanting a small combo amp, something I portable to take to a jam session or the like. I had been very happy with my Traynor YBA-1A's, and the YGM-3 Guitarmate was a likely candidate.
The YGM series came in several incarnations:
- Models: YGM-1, YGM-2, YGM-3, 3A and 3B, and a YGM-4.
- Some had reverb and no tremolo.
- Some had tremolo and no reverb.
- The later YGM3 and 4 models had both.
- Speakers were with either a single 12 inch or four 8 inch.
- All models were a combo amp but had a sealed rather than an open backed cabinet.
- The inputs jacks were either two jacks wired Fender BF style, or three jacks in parallel.
- Early models had a Fender style tone stack, later models were a Bandaxall circuit.
- Early models were cathode biased, later models fixed bias.
- All models were more or less 25 watts RMS.
- All models had a rather powerful bright cap.
- Speakers were either Marsland or CTS.
- I've heard it said some models used 6V6's but all the schematics I've seen call for EL-84/6BQ5's
My YGM-3 is a two input with a single 12. It has reverb and tremolo. It has four 12AX7's and two EL84 power tubes.
I got this amp off Ebay for a very good price, but it wasn't quite right. I had to put new JJ power tubes in right away as one of the ones that came with it was fried. The reverb didn't work, and the tremolo didn't sound all that good to me. The tremolo has grown on me, but I like all trems I find it too fast and intend to mod it to slow it down. The reverb turned out to have a bad connection in the tank, which I fixed. Neither the tremolo or reverb in this amp is up to Fender standards but they are adequate for as much as I use them. The amp didn't come with a footswitch and I had to buy and mod one to work with it.
As you can see the logo is missing, and the grillcloth has been replaced. Eventually I want to replace the grill cloth with something more Traynor-like, and I might get lucky and find a Traynor logo on Ebay.
Other than that, the amp sounded ok, but not great. The stock Marsland speaker in it really sucked, and I began by swapping it with a Pioneer musical instrument speaker I had sitting around as an experiment. It helped some, but not much. You can hear a little of that Brian May liquid tone when you push it hard due to the EL-84's.
Next I put an Eminence Private Jack in it, which I got from my friend Jeff Andrews. The Private Jack is Eminence's answer to the Greenback at a very good price. It made a massive difference in the tone of the amp and was happy with it until I bought some Vintage 30 speakers from Warehouse Guitar Speakers and installed one. I found it to be an improvement yet again and for the moment that is the speaker I am using in this amp.
I don't really like the Bandaxall tone stack in this thing, one of these days I am going to convert it to the earlier circuit and see what it sounds like. I like cathode biased amps and so might convert to that too, or at least mod the amp to be able to adjust the fixed bias it has now.
Basically it sounds good with the V30, all I really have to do is put an overdrive pedal in front of it and it sounds damn good. If you have a Guitarmate I highly recommend replacing the speaker because it will make all the difference in the world.
Other changes I've made are:
Recently Traynor has reissued this exact same amp as a hand wired, point to point model just like the original. You can still get the originals for good prices though.
