Traynor YCV20

15 watt 12AX7- EL84 Blah Blah Blah
This is a follow up review.
Swapped out stock POS Celestion Rocket 50,
Installed a Reverend Alltone 1250 after a long research of replacement speakers. I didn`t want the same old Greenback or Vintage 30 sound that is rampant out there so I opted for the Alltone 1250.
My choice had very much to do with positive reviews here at HC.

I got this amp to play at home which honestly never really gave me the opportunity to open her up if you know what I mean. In that vein it sounded good until I took it to jam with a buddy where we really cranked it godd for hours. That`s where the stock speaker`s shortcomings really became evident, farting,loose breakup etc.....
That`s when I realized that like everyone here says a speaker upgrade is needed. Enter the Alltone.What a difference. Reverend reccomends breakig in the speaker at stage volume for a couple hours which I was able to do a week after installation. They are right because at first it sounded very stark for lac of a better term but after cranking the shit out of the amp one day the Alltone sounds fantastic. Clean is bright to a point (this amp`s clean channel does break up at high volumes) and the overdrive channel sounds much tighter and louder.
No more farting out. This speaker upgrade to this amp is perfect IMHO.
My next upgrade will be a tube swap(J&J sells kits for this amp).
To change the speaker you need to pry off the front grill with a screwdriver. The grill is held in place with 4 tight clips.Once you get the grill off it`s a breeze.

The Alltone 1250 costs 69 bucks. The re-tube kit is 40 bucks.
If you buy this amp plan on sinking another 100 bucks into it.
I think it`s still worth it. My only concern now is the tubes and how they are held in place but I will know more about that soon at which time I will post another review.
450 for the amp 100 for upgrades brings you into different tube amp territory but I believe this little beast will be perfect after the tube swap and have it`s own tone compared to the too many Vintage 30/Greenback YCV20`s out there. Traynor should scrap the POS Rocket 50 and go with a better speaker. The amp is heavier now due to the 40 oz magnet vs the small magnet Rocket 50 which I gave away to a buddy who is building his own tube amp.

Fender channel and Marshall channel with switchable boost on the latter. (Included) dual latching footswitch with LEDs on a TRS. Unbuffered effects loop. Spring reverb. Shared 3 band EQ

This is after trying tubes, settling on JJ Tesla el84, EI telefunken clone 12ax7 in v1, and EH for the rest. Also replaced speaker with Eminence GB12. Now it is a great little amp. Strat gets pretty much all famous strat sounds from one amp. 335 sounds very good on the Marshall channel - that kinda magical breakup. Speaking of breakup, if you need any clean headroom at all go for the YCV40. I like a little dirt on everything. The reverb is great, tho the reverb pot on the controls needs to be changed/modified to a smaller value.

The feel of the tube sockets did not inspire confidence, but we'll see. My all-time fave amp (a MB - I won't say which b/c I don't want to help drive prices up) has PCB sockets and after years of service, I know it's solid.

haven't tried yet. stories on this page are encouraging.

Been playing over 20 years; I'm a struggling pro (getting back after hiatus). Got it b/c I wanted a deluxe type amp and they had one thrashed and non-functional in the damaged/junk bin at a local store. I tried a new one and liked the Fender channel. Tube and speaker change are necc, IMHO. After that it is dreamy. Plenty of nuts to play with a band as long as you understand that it has at least some grit throughout its entire operating range.

I wrote a review earlier. I'm the guy who got the banged up shipping container with a functioning amp in it. About three months after I got it it died. I took off the preamp tube cover and discovered the first stage pre. tube was not getting heater current. Wiggling it around in the circuit board (not socket) fixed it but it was obvious something was wrong. Not long after the reverb ceased to work. I perused the service manual and determined I was dealing with a cracked circuit board. Time to see if the warantee worked.

See above. This amp was apparantly thoroughly trashed by FedEx and it still worked for three months.

I sent an email to Yorkville and they said take it to my nearest dealer. I was slightly trepeditious about this as I had purchased from an Ebay dealer. Nevertheless I took it to a nearby dealer and he said "Not a problem." I want to take this space to plug Gary Taylor of Taylor Music in Yakima, WA for his help. It took about 3 weeks dor shiopping and repair and a parts bill that would have been more than $200 to get it going. I only had to pay c.$40 for shipping. This thing sounds better than before, especially now that it has a Celestion Classic 30 it.

I want to set one thing straight about Class A circuits.
I have read and heard so much crap about them I feel obliged to set the record straight. Any single ended triode output circuit is Class A, cathode followers are disdained by audiophiles but only because they introduce feedback (and only local feedback at that). It does not matter if the rectifier is SS or tube for purposes of definition. If the output stage has more than one tube wired in series you can call it a Class A1 circuit if you want to be real picky.

I just wanted to say to the owner of this amp who have experienced buzzing issues with this amp that I had similiar problems with this amp to the point of it being unusable.After several days of experimenting, I traced it to two black metal clips designed to keep the speaker cable and reverb cable from being cut on the metal chassis. Remove the chassis and find where the speaker and reverb cables come out of the amp and remove the black clips. It fixed all of my problems.

reverb is noisy when turned up, but it would rarely need to be turned up past '2', at which point it?s not noisy.

The brightness switch is the magic button that makes my Rickenbacker 330 higain neck pickup sound clear and un-muddied, normally that pickup just sounds way too bassy.

Ric & American Telecaster sound great through the clean channel. I'm not sure how much I like the drive channel - I prefer my fulltone bass-drive's overdrive, but then again, I haven't tried putting better tubes in this amp.

I played a small gig with this amp (not miked), in a band with a horn section, with a telecaster going through the clean channel. Gain was on 6 and volume on 8, and it still seemed to be clean, although I wouldn't have worried if it started to dirty up. From my standpoint, the amp was as loud as it needed to be. If the people in the audience couldn't hear the guitar, I consider that a product of us having the amp, drums, and bass unmiked, and not having a good overall band mix; it's not a product of the amp being not powerful enough. Turning it up louder (or having a more powerful amp) would have been too loud on-stage. Of course, we're not a very loud band either.

As people have said, the tubes are a bit hard to get at ? the speaker is in the way of using a regular screwdriver to get the power tubes out; the preamp tubes are behind a panel that is screwed down mega-tight from the factory.

There's a pause when switching from channel 1 over to channel 2 ? I hope that?s just because this is a mistreated rental amp. Other than that I can't comment on reliability since I've only had it for one month.

I?ve read that the upgraded speaker (Greenback) in the ycv20wr actually gives you less clean headroom and volume than the Rocket 50 in this one. I?ve emailed Yorkville a question pertaining to that three times over the past month and a half, and they don?t seem to want to respond.

I rented this to see if it would be a suitable back-up amp for gigs; for my purposes (traditional ska) I think it would. If it needs to be louder, mic it! It also is great for playing in the apartment, and nice and portable. I'm still not positive if I want to spend this much on a backup, so it remains to be seen if I'll actually buy one for myself.

Bought new in June 2003. All tube 15 watts. Two channels, bright switch on the clean and boost switch on the lead. Spring reverb. Foot switch for channel select and boost switch. Shared eq for both channels. Standby switch.... My only complaint is that I would prefer a separate eq for each channel.

My main guitars are an American Deluxe Stratocaster 50th anniversary with Bill Lawrence Samarium Colbalt Noiseless pickups and a Epiphone Vintage G-400 with Gibson designed PAF 57's. I sometime use an HSS Cort Viva with two noisefull mitymite single coils with some generic humbucker in the bridge.

I find myself in Blues, Rock (Led Zeppelin like), Jazz and some metal (kind of Dream Theater) The amp covers it all except for metal, at high gain the sound is too muddy.

No hiss, white noise or any such interfering noises. Usually I play it straight except for metal I place in front a Boss Metal Zone 2.

The clean channel is awesome both with humbuckers and single coils. It is really a fender class clean. The lead channel itself is fabulous for crunchy sounds (Marshall clean like) and quite impressive at high gain but not saturated unless you turn boost switch on it gets fully saturated but too muddy even dropping the bass with the eq is unsufficient. With the strat using a noiseless single coil in the bridge, the boosted high gain settings are way more usable, but not impressive, for metal lead.

I usually play home or with friends so I was seeking a loud enough tube amp for practice but usable at living room levels. With separate gain and volume for each channel I can get really nice tube tones at low level.

Warranteed 10 years plus 2 years even if you break it by manufacturer (Yorkville). I own other yorkville amps and never had any problems. Its solid, no doubt. If I ever gig I will have a backup because its a tube amp and mostly becauce you never know.

For now, I used it for a year everyday for a few hours and nothing went wrong.

Warranteed 10 years plus 2 years even if you break it by manufacturer (Yorkville). I don`t contact company since I have a great dealer that take care for me of these details and is also an authorized service center.

I played guitar for 2 years and a half. I also had a Marshall MG series solid state (that I sold few days after buying this Traynor). I also own a Yorkville XM100C bass amp that gave me faith in Yorkville products...

If lost or stolen I would not replace it since there is the YCV20WR version of this amp that has been released a week after I bought mine, that seems to address the few lacks of the YCV20 and also has a so nice vintage look.

When I was shopping the only other credible contestants were the Peavey Classic 30 and the Fender Blues Jr. The Peavey was a mess to tweak with the knobs and has a flat clean sound compared to the Fender and the Traynor. The Fender has no distorsion settings and no master volume. None of the two contestants had such a warranty.

For the price, no other amps is in the race. All I can say is find a good store where you can try gear for as long as you want (a good one: Musique Richard Gendreau, Quebec, Canada). Try one, you won't be disappointed as long as you know what to expect from a small combo 15 watts tube amp.

I don't know the year this one was made but Traynor made 4 design improvements between 2/03 and 5/03 and I am pretty sure these have fixed the problems discussed below. I play blues for recreation and the clean channel is good for a round sound except for non-linearities in the cheap Rocket 50 speaker, I will replace it. Foot switch for channel and boost selection activates relays in amp so no signal passes through the cord. There is a stereo effects loop but no ext. speaker out. I love the sound of Class A amps, my other is a Fender Champ. So far nobody has mentioned the tone EQs which seem to actually be parametric, turn the treble and bass to 10 and lower the mids and it delivers a nice scooped sound. I also like the reverb which does away with tube send and recieve for op-amps.

I'm using a G&L S-500 with stock pickups and it soumds pretty good even with the lousy speak. It isn't noisy (due to DC heaters) until you turn up the gain or switch on the "boost" circuit. It does a real nice Fender tone on the clean channel but it's hard to get much distortion. The lead channel can produce a good "British" distortion at any volume level, the "boost" switch on this channel really shreds. The reverb is really a special effect, above 5 it gets wobbly unless I use the delay on my Rocktron Tsunami. The combination of the two can produce a wide spectrum of reverbs.

I have a pretty good idea of the ruggedness of this amp although I've only had it a couple of months. FedEx shipped it upside down and made a 4" X 8" gash right through both shipping boxes. I plugged it in and it worked just fine. Even though the rip was right over the Tolex there was not one mark. The tubes were'nt even loose.

N/A

I played bass long ago and if you add in my lapsteel period I've been playing for a looong time. This is really my first serious attempt at the guitar. I considered a number of 30W. Class A amps but four El84s sounded like trouble to me. I might/would have bought a Peavey Delta Blues except they don't have a standby switch and cold El84s don't last long when they get a full jolt of B+.

Small venue amp, two channels, gain channel and clean channel, footswtchable, boost switch on gain channel, bright switch on clean, spring reverb, 12" celestion, Sovtek tubes...

Unlike a lot of reviews here I differ with the glowing reviews. I bought the amp based on reviews here and must say there is some truth to the reviews, but overall I sent the amp back for several reasons. First, the amp at medium volumes was buzzing and seemed to have several point of vibration noise mostly from the metal grill in front. There was no way I could put a mic in front of this and record much less play a show with the buzz. Sorry Traynor, I give you some credit here for the boost option on the gain channel as it sounded better than any pedals in front or through the effect returns.

Not sure as I sent it back. I really wanted this to work out but could not after noticing the poor construction quality control. I imagine its a lot to expect from a $500 amp, but there should be tighter QC... This one should have not left the factory for such a simple grill defect. Also not as hum free as advertised, especially on the clean channel. Plus count on changing out the speaker and a re-tube...fast approaching $700... Mesa Boogie F30 now is in range and mesa stuff is not the quietest in town either.

Website did not have clear phone numbers listed for support. Not sure how the process would be so no opinion here.

Playing guitar since 78, long enough to know good equipment. I could deal with the re-tube and speaker change out but not the vibration noise from the chassis and the grill also not the hum free amp as the description makes it out to be.

General specs:
15 watt, all tube
3 12ax7's, 2 EL84's
standby switch
12" Celestion Rocket 50 speaker
2 seperate footswitchable channels, 'lead' and 'clean' (footswitch included)
seperate master/volume controls for each channel
3 band EQ
gain boost for 'lead' channel (footswitchable)
brightness switch for 'clean' channel
accutronics spring reverb

Features for this price: 10

Sound/Tones: (via Gibson SG Classic w/P90s)

Clean channel is very nice and sparkly (with bright switch), although I haven't really cranked it yet, so don't know the upper limit before it breaks up.

Spring Reverb definitely makes it's presence felt. Usually '3' is enough. Anything past '5' and you get drenched in waves of echo, which is probably the intention, to accomadate vintage 'surf' sounds?

Gain/Lead channel sounds great too and where this amp excels. You can dial in all types of distortion, from light OD to fuzz (with gain boost pushed on).

Nice overdrive to me is 'Live at Leeds/Brown Sugar' type of crunch. For fuzz I like a 'Purple Haze' fuzz-tone. No need for any OD pedals with this amp, at least to my ears, as it handles both types of OD and fuzz very nicely.

Another great feature is the master/volume controls. You can get great clean/distortion tones at bedroom levels without disturbing the neighbors. Like I said, I haven't been able to crank the 'clean' channel yet, so not sure how much 'clean' is on tap at loud volumes, but other reviewers have remarked it handles it well.

Owned this amp for just over 4 weeks, no problems yet. Seems very sturdy and well-built. The standby switch is a very nice feature, which should prolong the life of the valve tubes.

I haven't dealt with Traynor customer support (yet). Traynor provides a 2 year 'we fix it even if you break it', so I'm not too concerned.

Overall: 10
Great sounding, very versital all-tube combo amp for the price. I also considered the Fender Blues Jr and Crate V1512. The Traynor sounded as good, if not better than both, plus the Traynor wins hands down by having two seperate channels for about the same price.

Anyone in the market for a great little 15 watt tube combo amp should give the Traynor a tryout. TR** May 03,2004

1.5 year after update - The amp still has a nice sound but problems have developed There is a noticable Hiss, and a loud pop when switching channels 1 to 2. The line out is hissy - no good for trying recording, or going directly out to a board instead of micing. It's been in the shop twice. The first time was for the hiss. That's now repaired. But it's got a loud pop when switching channels. It went out a month to the shop, when i got it back the pop soon developed again......I'm packing it up third time.

1.5 year update - Style ??? - who cares the amp has problems, pops when switching from 1 to 2, it's irratating to play

I started having problems at the 1 year mark. It's now 1.5 years It's been in the shop twice....soon to be thrice. Thank Goodness I've got a back up....the most reliable amp is a back up,.,,remember that !!

eh, these guy's hear the problem and keep trying to get it right....unit must be a lemon

a mistake.....