Traynor Mono Block II Bass Head

A 70s era monster I first saw a friend playing in 75 at a high school dance. Just a straight up bass head with bass,treble,mid and an EQ.I play classic rock (Aerosmith to ZZ Top).Plenty of power.Sometimes I think i've blown a speaker,but its the room rattling.

I have a MIM Fender Jazz Bass, and an Epiphone EB-3.I use a Digitech BP 200 for a little shape on a few songs, but generally keep it on setting #1(punch) or bypass and just use it for the tuner.Am running it through a Peavey 1820 cab, with 1 of the 10s blown and disconnected, soon to be just the 18 and an Ampeg 410 to rein this monster in(yeah,,right).Only other speaker I would want is the Traynor with the folded 18 and 2 5"sfront mounted.Havent ever seen 1 of those since the 70s when I saw my first Traynor,and have never heard anything else that even came close

I have no backup,(unless you count a Fender Rumble 2-10).Had a new power cord and a new power switch installed,and the service guy told me he went over everything ,and couldnt find anything else to fix or replace, and believe me ,this guy always find something else to charge you for if he can. an earlier reviewer said to throw it down the stairs so you dont hvae to lug it ,maybe a bit harsh, but this thing is a tank.I'm surprised someone from the Toronto area hasn't tried going over Niagra Falls in a Traynor cab!

Had the work previously mentioned done locally.

Been playing since 72,Eighth grade in rock bands and in high school band(our band director was sooo cool).This amp is just a very simple very loud amp that I' wanted for 30 years and finally found 1.If it were stolen, I'd track the bastard down, put him facing it about 2 feet away and just wail on him.I had a Sunn 100S with a 2-15 cab thru high school, and it was ok, but nothing compared to this rig.Had a Peavey Mark IV thru the above mentioned 1820 cab,just didnt do it for me.

Late 70s Canadian solid state amp... but I get a lot of people asking me if it's tube, it's about as close as you can get to tube without going tube. I run it into a Sunn 215 cab @ 4 ohms, and that's fine by me. As stated in the other reviews, it's 325 @ 2 ohms and 250 @ 4 ohms. I can only imagine it running full power... almost completely uncalled for, but if that's your bag, go for it! Ha

I play bass in a "Stoner Rock" setting (really heavy fuzzed out guitars) so volume is an issue... the most common compliment I get about this amp is "Holy **** that's loud" ha. But then again, when I want to have more mellow jams with my friends, I just turn the gain down a little bit and I'm all set. It's a rock rig, that's for sure.

I've used it as a guitar rig (same setup) and dayum! I warned everyone in the house "I'm going to try to crank this." Had a rat distortion on, cranked the gain up to where it was sounding nice, brought the volume to 5 and the house started shaking! So I turned it to 3 and played... felt like someone was punching me in the gut! This amp is power... no problems cutting through in any setting

It can stay really clean at high volumes, I tend to push it to light overdrive just to add a little crunch. I essentailly wrote most of what I should have said here in the Features section... ha. It sounds awesome!

This amp has been through hell, before I bought it! It looks like someone threw it down a flight of stairs. I threw it on solid cement while throwing a hissyfit, and it worked fine next gig. One time, I had problems with it... I freaked out... but it ended up being the cable. This amp is a tank! It weighs a lot too and looks like a VCR from the 80s, ha.

I can't imagine needing customer support. It's usually not my bag to hunt down customer support. But I don't know why you'd need it. This is a out of production amp, so who knows, might be tricky.

As long as I'm playing rock, this may be the rig for me. This isn't really isn't for the "modern bassist tone" (which is obvious, it's a vintage amp) so if it's your goal to sound like Wooten, etc, run far away from this amp. But then again, I've only used 15 inch speakers with this amp, I can imagine it would sound less midrangey with some 10s. But that's what I love, I can get thundering lows and a punch midrange for cutting through. Sorry for being cheesy and giving perfect 10s to everything, but that's how I feel about this amp.

This amp is very basic with only a few options that set it apart from the most basic vintage amps like a Fender bassman. It basically has the same controls as an Acoustic 370 except it has a master volume which allows you to crank the gain for a bit more grit and sustain which sounds great. You can run it all day at a 2 ohm load no sweat @ which it pumps out 325 huge watts. It doesn't say on the amp but the Traynor site give 250 watts @ 4 ohms 325 @ 2 ohms. Even into a 1x12 cab it is muscular and loud. Into a 2x15 it is a monster. Opening up the amp reveals the beautiful and simplistic engineering that makes this such a wonderful amp. There are no printed circuit boards. All the wiring is beautifully hand soldered and the components are top notch. They are all housed in a futuristic aluminum and stamped steel casing that looks like it came off the Apollo program. Everything inside is so easily laid out that it would be a piece of cake to fix. The quality of these things is probably why they have a reputation for NEVER breaking. For what this amp is I give it's features a 10 beacuse anything to complicate its design further would probably detract from its tone and servicablity.

Tone-wise this amp is quite versatile. Not because it is a chameleon but because the simply rich tone that that it dishes out sounds good for pretty much any style with only minor adjustments. It is a large, vintage tone reminiscent of an Acoustic 360. Volume wise it puts to shame many modern amps with the same wattage. I have a GK 1001 RB II which is a great amp. The GK might have a little wider response and you can dial in a more modern tone but at its 700 watts it has nothing on the Mono Block II in terms of Tone at Volume. It is also quiet.

I haven't had it for very long but based on its quality and reputation I can't think of another amp that would be better. Traynor built there amps to be reliable god bless their souls.

I can't comment on this but Yorkville and the Traynor name are still around. I think I could get a wiring diagram if need be. I'm sure any qualified repair tech could take care of any problems it might never have.

I've been playing for 14 years now and I use this amp with a V4B 2x15 folded horn. As I said I also have a Gallien Krueger 1001 RB II and a GK NEO 412. Both these amps are great but if I had to pick 1 I would probably choose the Traynor. For 1 it is one of the coolest looking amps on earth for 2 it sounds much better than pretty much everything else I've owned.For 3 they are RARE and For 4 because it is almost all aluminum it is relatively light, about the same weight as the GK when you mount it in a case.

Don't know the year of build. Very straight forward affair that combines sounding good and being incredibly reliable. You have to realize it won't have channel switching as no bass amps did in that time. For it's era, it was a real treasure as it was inexpensive, sounded killer, bullet proof, and was great for humiliating the guys with any of the solid state heads of the time which it absolutely buried. Those it was not louder than it sounded better than. Most of the time it sounded better AND louder as it could kick out 325 rms into a 2 ohm load (2 SVT cabs, 2 Acoustic 370 cabs, or something equally insane) all night long and not self destruct like 370 heads were inclined to do. It really is no swiss army knife so it gets an 8. Caveat is that it does what a bass amp needs to do super well.

Marvelous clean and loud. Between the rotary pots for the usual bass mid and treble and a graphic EQ you could set up whatever tone you needed. I was doing rock and R&B at the time. It would have done anything well except something where you needed/wanted tube grunge distortion. That does not count against it in my book as they do what they do so well.

Built for combat and stone cold reliable. I believe you took off the top, flipped over that cover, and looking at you was the schematic! Well designed and virtually any repair person could have fixed it but it never would break.

When they were around as current product, all the support was mind boggling. Very good. Of course though, they were so reliable that the customer support was almost irrelevant. It was nice to know it was there though. They had the two year "even if you break it" warrantee which meant they would do warrantee on it even if you did something rock and roll drunk stupid to it.

I have had a long line of bass heads. Like a fool I sold it. I wish I still had it. It was just so much better than any solid state thing then. Really still is a credible bass head today, something I can't say for a lot of its contemporaries. Properly setup, one of these would be an incredible value and would also not be the liability a lot of vintage stuff for going out on you in the middle of a set.

I have two of these mothers and they work great for bass and they work great for guitars. In general these things have a lotta balls and you can get a nice thick guitar tone.
One of these has thin plastic knobs which are good and my other has wide plastic silver and black knobs, which aren't as good, but once they're set who cares.

I use this amp for my guitar with a traynor cab. with two fifteens. It sounds nice and has lots of power.
My guitar is a gibson les paul goldtop
For the bass I am using the other amp with a custom cab. with two eighteen inch blackwidows. It sounds ok for bass, at least it's got balls, but when I plug my guitar into that setup it sounds good also.

Apart from getting them cleaned I've had no problems.
They have power and are amazing lumps of metal that never break.
Go ahead and toss one out the window, it'll save you lugging it's weight down to the car.

L+M are SLOW asses!

I would recommend to anyone looking for a vintage sounding amp with some serious balls and low prices to hook up with one of these babies.

This amp is super loud, doesn't make you waste time with the knobs, since it hardly has any.

I play a fender p-bass throught it, with 2 15" mesa boogie cabs. It's killer.

Broken once, but fixed for under $50 in Manhattan.

n/a

I also use a trace AH250, but they sound equally great

This Canadian amp was built in 77, Very simple controls, you have your gain, low,mid,high, master volume and a 5 band eq. There is one channel only with high/low inputs, there are no effects and no compression circuitry. The amp puts out a very healthy 325 watts into 2 ohms, and thats the reason I picked it up, both my bass cabs (Peavey 2x10,115BW) are 4 ohm cabs and a lot of the current bass amps don't run lower than 4 ohms (officially anyways). This is a Solid state amp but due to the massive transformers inside, and the equally as huge aluminum heat sinks that also double as handles, it weighs a fair bit. 2 speaker inputs on the rear, polarity switch and a pre-amp out, pwr amp in jacks. No fuses here, there is a circuit breaker instead. There are feet on the right side of the amp aswell as the bottom so you have a choice of how you want the amp to sit on stage.

I play a Fender Standard Jazz, and play Classic rock generally. The amp has ample headroom and has lots in reserve for dynamic playing styles. The amp is very quiet and only hisses a little bit when the master volume is turned up past 8, I never need to turn it up past 5, and that will keep up nicely with 2 guitarists and a drummer, the soundman has asked me to turn down on occasion as my stage sound was coloring his PA mix. For those that enjoy a little bass distortion, well don't bother looking here, as simple solid state clipping sounds horrible, clean is the ticket here baby. The amp has a simple tone, but is is no nonsense and belts through the mix with a nut crunching bottom end.

This thing is so structurally overbuilt that I don't worry about treating it with kid gloves. I don't need a backup amp, I have that much faith in the Traynor.

Don't think I'll ever need it.

I've been playing for a few years now and I think the Traynor is a great amp, I love it's simplicity and ample balls. I'm currently on the lookout for another one so that I can run 2 :o)