Traynor TS-50B

197?
I played bass through this amp in a previous band and I play guitar through it in my current band. It has low and normal inputs, solid-state 50watts, line-out, 2 speaker outs, circuit breaker switch rather than any frustrating fuses, gain knob, middle, bass, and treble tone knobs and volume respectively. I love the huge vintage knobs!!! I wish it had more power for bass, but for guitar it is pure and clean. I think a built in chorus would be cool, but this amp totally does it's job in my case.

I recorded a fender jazz bass with a bolt-on neck and passive pick-ups through this amp and the tone is awesome. I had a really "gainy" sound!!! I almost had a getti lee tone. I love the clean and pronounced notes that I get from it on guitar. I play very percussively and this amp gives me articulate notes with the right amount of punch that I want. I use an Ibanez with passive pick-ups. I like the control I have with the passive pick-ups in combination with this head. Right now I run this amp through 2 vintage Ampeg V-4 cabs (4X10 each). The sound just fills the room without being harsh, abrasive, or ear-biting. I can't wait to record my guitar through it. The distortion can get completely saturated from just a slight over-driven. On guitar, I prefer the volume on about 7-8 and the gain somewhere between 1-3. On bass, I prefer the volume on 9 and the gain on 3-4. It just doesn't have the low end for bass.

As far as I know this amp has had no problems. I have taken it on tour through hot and cold temps and it has done just fine!!! This amp is reliable in my opinion. You don't have the worry of tubes or fuses. But it is an old amp so you never know what might happen. Form what I hear though... it isn't difficult to get it serviced.

I guess I would compare it to a Fender Bassman. I also have a 100watt MusicMan head. I love vintage gear for the tone and warmth, but there is always the worry of problems or the gear crapping out on you. I have 2 vintage Ampeg V-4 cabinets. They ar heavy but I love their look, durability and tone.

Solid State Traynor 50 watt Bass Head.

Made: 197?

Controls:
Boost Switch
Gain
Middle
Bass
Treble
Master Volume
Power

Rear Panel Features:
Circuit Breaker
Two 8 ohm Speaker Outputs
Line Out
Boost Switch Jack

50 watts good for guitar bad for bass.

Boost can be operated by foot switch. Nice feature. This thing is so simple it's beautiful. I liked it so much I bought two.

Applications:

One for Travis Bean Guitar and other for Moog Taurus pedals.
The guitar application powers a 4x12 Mesa boogie cabinet and it sounds wonderful. No problem with the 50 watts of power. I turn it up to about 6 and it's plenty loud. Saturates nicely with a the gain turned up about half way. To be clear. This is not used as a heavy distortion type of head. Just a nice saturated, sort of breaking up guitar tone. Hence, the harder you play the more the sound drives in to distortion. Coupled with this particular guitar it's quite powerful sounding. Used similiarly with the Taurus pedals. However, I use a more powerful amp to drive that system. 50 watts just doesn't cut it.

Both units seem fairly dependable. Being used, 20 some years old, I had them both checked by a local tech and both got a decent bill of health. Had to have power cords on both replaced. Normal wear and tear I suppose. One needed a couple of capacitors. Other than that pretty decent and well priced. These things go to every gig, back up or not.

Never had to deal with Yorkville/Traynor.

Simple, easy to use, sounds great and weighs under 20 lbs. What else can you say? More manufacturer's should do this sort of thing. Why pay for overpriced spaceship navigational control amplifiers?
Oh yeah, just one thing would make this better. More power is needed for modern bass applications.

This is a later model Traynor Bass amp. It is solid state in design.
The features are as follows (L to R):
-Boost Switch, this is a gain boost. it can also be activated by a footswitch.
-2 inputs: Low input for "high gain" or "active" instruments and Normal gain for "regular" or "passive instruments.
-Gain Knob
-Middle ''
-Bass ''
-Trebble ''
-Volume ''
-Power switch
Back Panel:
-Circuit Breaker
-2 Speaker Jacks (50 watts into 8ohms, 70 into 4ohms)
-Boost Foot Switch Jack
-Line out

The Gain and Volume control work well together to get a variety of clean to overdriven sounds. the owners manual suggests turning the main Volume to 10 and then using the gain as a volume control. I imagine this is for the cleanest possible sound. it seems to work well that way. very clean and flat sounding. the boost switch seems to work best when the gain is above 4 or 5. I think they work in tandem.
the EQ is very simple. Mid, Bass, Treble (strange layout order)
when they are all turned down to 1 this lowers the over-all volume to nil. this EQ seems to be quite full range.
The line out works great as this amp is only 50 watts. it can be used to drive another power amp or use to go direct into a mixer.
I love the tone the preamp in this unit has.

I use both guitar and bass in my band. the gain control can give some really nice saturation.

for a solid state amp this thing sounds pretty "hi-fi". may be a bit less warm than a comparable valve amp from Traynor or Ampeg but it has much more character than any other s.s. amp i've used, including: Peavy, Crate, Carvin, Ampeg(b-3) and Hartke (sorry they're crap too). My only complaint so far is the low wattage.

I know Bob Weston from Shellac uses these in the studio and I dig his sound. I think he only runs the pre amp live, into a crown power amp.
The 50 watts just dosn't cut it.

Well... I got the thing and tested it out with a two-way mini-monitor I have in my shop to test stuff through and it sounded great. after I pulled it apart to clean it I must have knocked a few cold solder joints loose. After researching these a bit I'm told they've bee know to have some bad solder points from the factory. the problem was fast and easy to have fixed (thanks Geof)

all that said: I think the curcuit design is well done and reliable, the actual assebelage of the unit is lacking a little. I will know after my tour in march if it's road worthy.
Basically if your good with a soldering iron you should be fine.

I called Yorkville Sound in upstate new york (Niagra area)when the thing crapped out. they were willing to work on just about any Traynor product at about 2/3 the price of having it fixed here in NYC. Nice people. They set me a PDF of the owners manual and the schematic (thanks Mike Holman).
I eventually had a friend go through it and fix it in about 45 minutes. that was free.

Just the fact that yorkville was willing to work on it for a reasonable price and dug up the info for me says a lot.

this is the best expirience I've ever had with a out of production product and customer support.

but since I went elswere and didn't get to test their ability to fix it I give the score above.

I haven't had it that long.
I like it a lot.
I would like to get another one in mint condition so I can pull the preamp out of this one and make a stand alone preamp but still have an unaltered one.
I will alway keep one in my amp arsenal.
I wish it was 100 watts...50 is cool for recording though.
It's nice and light.

IT'S A CANADIAN HEAD I'M NOT SURE IF ITS FOR BASS OR GUITAR.I PROMISE YOU, IF OR WHEN THIS BEAUTIFUL AMP LEAVES' I'M GOING TO BE COMPLETELY LOST ON WHAT TO GET.IT HAS A BOOST SWITCH,ALINE OUT,A NORMAL AND A LOW INPUT,INPUT FOR A PEDEL TO SWITCH BOOST ON AND OFF(I DONT HAVE THE PEDEL),50 WATTS ,8 OHMS.,TWO SPEAKER OUTS,SOLID-STATE,ON/OFF SWITCH,CONTROLS ARE BASS,TREB,MID,GAIN,AND VOLUME,GREY CARPETING WITH HALF BLACK,HALF GREY FRONT WITH TRAYNOR LOGO.I HAVE A EPIPHONE LES PAUL AND I PLAY IT THROUGH A DOD TEC4(WICH I ONLY USE FOR THE SLIGHT BOOST)THEN A BOSS DD-150 DIGITAL DELAY,THEN IN COMES THE TRAYNOR POWERING A 4X12 AMPEG CAB.WICH I TURN UP ALMOST ALL THE WAY TO OVERDRIVE IT AND I PROMISE YOU IT'S THE MOST FULLEST,SMOOTHEST SOUND,ARE BAND BASICALLY PLAYS OPEN TYPE CHORDS ,BUT I PROMISE IT CAN DO IT ALL,PAID ONLY $25 WOULD HAVE PAID A MIL.,LOVE TO GET ANOTHER ONE SOMEHOW.

IT'S A CANADIAN HEAD I'M NOT SURE IF ITS FOR BASS OR GUITAR.I PROMISE YOU, IF OR WHEN THIS BEAUTIFUL AMP LEAVES' I'M GOING TO BE COMPLETELY LOST ON WHAT TO GET.IT HAS A BOOST SWITCH,ALINE OUT,A NORMAL AND A LOW INPUT,INPUT FOR A PEDEL TO SWITCH BOOST ON AND OFF(I DONT HAVE THE PEDEL),50 WATTS ,8 OHMS.,TWO SPEAKER OUTS,SOLID-STATE,ON/OFF SWITCH,CONTROLS ARE BASS,TREB,MID,GAIN,AND VOLUME,GREY CARPETING WITH HALF BLACK,HALF GREY FRONT WITH TRAYNOR LOGO.I HAVE A EPIPHONE LES PAUL AND I PLAY IT THROUGH A DOD TEC4(WICH I ONLY USE FOR THE SLIGHT BOOST)THEN A BOSS DD-150 DIGITAL DELAY,THEN IN COMES THE TRAYNOR POWERING A 4X12 AMPEG CAB.WICH I TURN UP ALMOST ALL THE WAY TO OVERDRIVE IT AND I PROMISE YOU IT'S THE MOST FULLEST,SMOOTHEST SOUND,ARE BAND BASICALLY PLAYS OPEN TYPE CHORDS ,BUT I PROMISE IT CAN DO IT ALL,PAID ONLY $25 WOULD HAVE PAID A MIL.,LOVE TO GET ANOTHER ONE SOMEHOW.ALWAYS PLAY SHOWS WITH IT.

IT'S A CANADIAN HEAD I'M NOT SURE IF ITS FOR BASS OR GUITAR.I PROMISE YOU, IF OR WHEN THIS BEAUTIFUL AMP LEAVES' I'M GOING TO BE COMPLETELY LOST ON WHAT TO GET.IT HAS A BOOST SWITCH,ALINE OUT,A NORMAL AND A LOW INPUT,INPUT FOR A PEDEL TO SWITCH BOOST ON AND OFF(I DONT HAVE THE PEDEL),50 WATTS ,8 OHMS.,TWO SPEAKER OUTS,SOLID-STATE,ON/OFF SWITCH,CONTROLS ARE BASS,TREB,MID,GAIN,AND VOLUME,GREY CARPETING WITH HALF BLACK,HALF GREY FRONT WITH TRAYNOR LOGO.I HAVE A EPIPHONE LES PAUL AND I PLAY IT THROUGH A DOD TEC4(WICH I ONLY USE FOR THE SLIGHT BOOST)THEN A BOSS DD-150 DIGITAL DELAY,THEN IN COMES THE TRAYNOR POWERING A 4X12 AMPEG CAB.WICH I TURN UP ALMOST ALL THE WAY TO OVERDRIVE IT AND I PROMISE YOU IT'S THE MOST FULLEST,SMOOTHEST SOUND,ARE BAND BASICALLY PLAYS OPEN TYPE CHORDS ,BUT I PROMISE IT CAN DO IT ALL,PAID ONLY $25 WOULD HAVE PAID A MIL.,LOVE TO GET ANOTHER ONE SOMEHOW.ALWAYS PLAY SHOWS WITH IT.

DONT NO ANY WAY TO REACH THE COMPANY.

IT'S A CANADIAN HEAD I'M NOT SURE IF ITS FOR BASS OR GUITAR.I PROMISE YOU, IF OR WHEN THIS BEAUTIFUL AMP LEAVES' I'M GOING TO BE COMPLETELY LOST ON WHAT TO GET.IT HAS A BOOST SWITCH,ALINE OUT,A NORMAL AND A LOW INPUT,INPUT FOR A PEDEL TO SWITCH BOOST ON AND OFF(I DONT HAVE THE PEDEL),50 WATTS ,8 OHMS.,TWO SPEAKER OUTS,SOLID-STATE,ON/OFF SWITCH,CONTROLS ARE BASS,TREB,MID,GAIN,AND VOLUME,GREY CARPETING WITH HALF BLACK,HALF GREY FRONT WITH TRAYNOR LOGO.I HAVE A EPIPHONE LES PAUL AND I PLAY IT THROUGH A DOD TEC4(WICH I ONLY USE FOR THE SLIGHT BOOST)THEN A BOSS DD-150 DIGITAL DELAY,THEN IN COMES THE TRAYNOR POWERING A 4X12 AMPEG CAB.WICH I TURN UP ALMOST ALL THE WAY TO OVERDRIVE IT AND I PROMISE YOU IT'S THE MOST FULLEST,SMOOTHEST SOUND,ARE BAND BASICALLY PLAYS OPEN TYPE CHORDS ,BUT I PROMISE IT CAN DO IT ALL,PAID ONLY $25 WOULD HAVE PAID A MIL.,LOVE TO GET ANOTHER ONE SOMEHOW.ALWAYS PLAY SHOWS WITH IT.