Yorkville Traynor Guitar Mate YGM-1

[NoCurfew]

Hi,

This is my first post on the site!

I have a really old YGM-1 It used to belong to my father and about 10 years ago I started using it. One day sometime later while jamming with my buddies it stopped working...The power light would still come on but no sound. Not knowing much about amp repair back then, I brought it to a guy who said he couldn't fix it. So I left it aside and moved on to something else.

Lately though I saw the thing in a corner and though with some time and a multi-meter I could probably figure out the problem.

Well, it turned out the speaker was bad. I replaced that with a supposedly creamy Celestion, and voila! works again. The tubes seem to light up correctly and all.

One problem though (actually was a problem for me originally), it sounds very harsh (no bottom end) even though it's basically a sealed enclosure...it seems no matter the tone/bass settings I can never get it to sound right. Could this be related to bad tubes? or something tricky like bad resistances/capacitors? I have a schematic for it, but I just don't know what to look for.

thanks

Bob

[JDW3]

Spend a few minutes/half hour swapping preamp tubes, starting with V1. Turn reverb off. You should hear the difference between good tubes and bad. It could be caps that have gone bad from sitting too long.

[loudthud]

There are several different versions of that amp. See if you can find a schematic online somewhere and post a link so everyone is on the same page. Can you hook the speaker to another amp to verify it's good?

[TheElectricMoron]

I have one of those and have had a couple other Traynor YGM's. The closed cabs pretty much suck. If it is the screw-on back kind just leave the back off and you'll see what I mean instantly. The YGM4 (for all practical purposes the circuits were so much alike that you couldn't tell/hear a difference) that I have now got a new back with a nice big hole in it. Sounds just great. The schemo that was inside this one had a printed "YGM3" on it that was handwritten over with a "4". A schemo that I have for a "3", without the handwriting, is identical as far as I can see.
At any rate, vent the cab and you'll love it. Even the original speaker will sound pretty good.

JMO of course YMMV

Charlie

[Steve L]

Traynor YGM-1 Schematic

I repaired/modified one of these earlier this year. The customer had the same complaint that you have regarding the harsh tone of the amp.
The modification I did was very easy and worked very well.
I removed the .001uf cap across the volume pot. That was it.
.001uf is just too much for that application. After listening to it, we decided it was very much to his liking and I did not put anything in there to replace it.
You could put something like a 47pf back in if the sound is not bright enough for you.

I attached a copy of the schematic that I have.

By the way, my customer's speaker was good yet he did not like it and decided to replace it with a Tone Tubby 12".
Frankly, I thought the original was better. I took the original speaker as part of the deal.
Send me a PM if you would be interested in it.

Steve

[Phostenix]

You could put something like a 47pf back in if the sound is not bright enough for you.

That's interesting. I have an Ampeg VL-503 that had a 120pF cap across the clean channel Volume control like that. I removed it a couple of years ago & am much happier without it. It made it much more usable with dirt boxes in front of the clean channel, too.

[TheElectricMoron]

I repaired/modified one of these earlier this year. The customer had the same complaint that you have regarding the harsh tone of the amp.
The modification I did was very easy and worked very well.
I removed the .001uf cap across the volume pot. That was it.
.001uf is just too much for that application. After listening to it, we decided it was very much to his liking and I did not put anything in there to replace it.
You could put something like a 47pf back in if the sound is not bright enough for you.

I attached a copy of the schematic that I have.

By the way, my customer's speaker was good yet he did not like it and decided to replace it with a Tone Tubby 12".
Frankly, I thought the original was better. I took the original speaker as part of the deal.
Send me a PM if you would be interested in it.

Steve

I know I never left the tonestacks in any of mine stock so that was not a problem. This most recent one just sounded dead dead dead. Actually I yanked the back off to change the speaker and just happened to try it one more time before pulling the speaker. Sounded just fine. Changed the speaker anyway and sounded bit better so I made a new back for the cab with a hole in it. Found out too late that about 1/2 the speaker area detunes anything so the hole is larger than it needs to be but WTF? It works and the amp sounds just way cool.

Charlie