Mystery Traynor

Here's a very interesting Traynor combo I acquired in a trade recently. It''s a YRM-1 but with a difference-it's a combo with 4-10 inch speakers, reverb, tremelo and master volume. You can see about how large it is by comparison to the Twin Twelve in the background.

It passed the strange stuff test with flying colors so I had to have it, even if it necessitated a detour to Carbondale Illinois on a pretty hot day when I was supposed to be in Louisville. The pinion seal on the Ranger took a dump on this trip, made a mess and caused no end of grief, and that'll have to be fixed but it'll keep until the weather cools off a little.

One thing I noticed when I got back home was that the output transformer seemed a little on the smallish side and I was right. Someone in this amp's past replaced the original Hammond with a Schumacher Bandmaster output-a little light for the task, methinks. But there's some good iron in the laboratory and on fleabay so all I gotta do is measure up the original mounting holes and see what can be acquired. I'm thinking a Twin Reverb output would be swell, you figure double the impedance for only a single pair of tubes, and if memory serves me right I may have one. I don't like EL34s much.

As well the vibrato needs tuning because the volume goes down a bit too much for my taste although it does oscillate fine. The reverb is swampy and lush, it's got lots of volume and overall it is in pretty fair shape.

This is the first one of these I've ever seen. Most of the YRM-1s were heads intended to create the Bassmaster tone with reverb and vibrato and a master volume. It'll need a look around inside when I get some spare time.