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 put new JJ power tubes in right away as I wasn't sure about the quality of the old tubes. 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.
Other than that, the amp sounded good. The stock Marsland speaker in it wasn't all that good though, and I swapped it with an Eminence Private Jack, 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.
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, for about $1100 street price.
