Given Traynor’s reputation for quality*, I can’t say I’m surprised to hear this. But bear in mind that noise is often a product of the environment - I recently picked up an old Fender hybrid amp at Goodwill, which was dead quiet in the store; when I got it back to my apartment, it sounded just like any other amp does in my apartment: like somebody running over a Cuisinart with a lawnmower. I’m seriously considering building a Faraday cage.
This is not a dumb question! Hifi speaker manufacturers have noted that the mechanical compliance of woofers will change over the course of the first few dozen hours of use (the “break-in period”), and so you can expect the same effect with your guitar amp’s speaker. The net effect is an apparent deepening of the bass over time.
I guess, if you were to play, say, only amplified piccolo at soft volumes, you could maybe avoid breaking in the speaker much at all, until the day your friend borrows it for a heavy metal gig, after which you may hate the way it sounds.
As for the electrical components: all else being equal (volume control position, especially, though a well-designed amp should be able to take anything you throw at it), I’m pretty sure that any argument that the amp might have preference for Segovia over Motorhead would need to take place in the realm of metaphysics.
*Apparently, their Q.A. testing involves firing the amplifier out of a cannon, and if it survives, firing the cannon at the amplifier.
Hi Ministre! Still haven’t bought your album yet but I loved the tracks I listened to! I’ll pick it up payday.
A clean amp will pretty much stay a clean amp, unless as noted above, you run a lot of signal or distortion through it and damage it.
I love Traynors and have an Yorkville AM-50 which was my first amp. It still sounds fantastic after nearly 20 years and the only maintenance I’ve had to do is clean the pots once and a while. I have no doubt that running an electric with some overdrive/distortion on it wouldn’t phase it in the least. I would unhesitatingly recommend you get one!
Incidentally, that is exactly the config I ran through it before I bought my tube amp and it still plays my Seagull and Garrison acoustics with pretty much all the sparkle and panache that it did when it was new.
Slight nitpick: Ok, it was throwing test units off the roof (2nd story, I believe), replacing the tubes, and seeing if it would still work. I’m not even sure if that’s actually true, but it’s the slightly more believable one.
Even if it’s not true, the old ones were built very durably. The more recent vintage ones do not have that testing regimen from what I gather, but they’re still pretty well built. I use a 2006 YCS100 (and gig with it weekend after next!), and can attest that it’s a well built amp. It does have some plastic connectors, but the ones you’re going to use a lot and stress are made of metal, and the toggle switches are similarly built.
But! This amp was the amp that could make toast with it’s power tubes a few months ago. After a trip to the amp repairman and a new resistor in it’s extremely fancy self biasing circuit, it’s happy again. While I was paying him and chatting about the equipment I’d brought in, he asked how long I had owned it. I hadn’t owned it for long (only a few years), and it turns out that the previous owner had brought it in to him as well. When he got the circuit board out, he saw some other work on the amp that looked like his handiwork, and he looked through his records and found the previous owner.
So, with 2 repairs over its 10 year life, this isn’t the most reliable tube amp. However, Traynor stopped making it, and still makes its lower watt stable mates, which have a good reputation. Their hand wired and transistor amps should not have any problems. Really, 2 repairs on a tube based circuit board amp in 10 years isn’t bad, but I have a 50 year old (:eek: I didn’t realize) hand wired amp that’s been to the shop once in its life. So, I’m spoiled.
I replaced some Wolfetone DR. V humbuckers in my Vigier recently with the Seymour Duncan Pegasus and Sentient set.
The Dr. Vs were really great at clean, blues and classic rock but not harder stuff. To be fair they were not designed for that and I should have known better.
These SD pickups are easily the best pickups I have had in this guitar and I have had all sorts of things in there. I am really happy with how they sound. The Pegasus bridge does great clear metal rhythm and the Sentient is smooth and thick for leads. I guess someone wanting a sharper neck lead tone might not like it but I like smooth (for example like John Petrucci).
The real surprise is the split coil sounds, which are perfect for cleans.
I am finally, completely happy with the sound of this guitar and it pairs well with the Fractal Audio AX8 that I have (which is awesome).
The only bad thing is that the DR. Vs did not come with any markings on the back or any literature, so I can’t easily sell them. This is silly but I would feel guilty writing Wolfetone and asking them to send me some type of authentication because then I would have to admit to them that I am getting rid of them. Stupid- I know.
by-tor - congrats on the swap! I find Seymour Duncan continues to deliver quality product. I have them in my homebrews.
As for the Wolfetones, have you tried getting on The Gear Page and asking how other pickup swappers have dealt with your issue? You can’t have been the first.
This was actually the case for Collins Radio (now Rockwell Collins); when Mr. Collins himself was trying to make a sale, he would throw the unit out the window of the plane onto the tarmac, and then reinstall it. Of course it still worked perfectly. Great way to close the deal. A pilot once told me, that’s the only radio equipment he ever wanted to see when in the cockpit was Collins. Great testament to quality.
Have any of you heard about this guy, Ed Stilley? God told him in a dream to make guitars and give them away. That’s lovely, but… these instruments are, well, not what you think of when you hear the word ‘Guitar’.
Yeah those are being discussed on the Acoustic Guitar Forum. Some folks love their Folk Art quirkiness, and others decry the impracticality/silliness. We’re a mixed bag, we guitar players.
But there are guitars made all sorts of funky ways, out of mufflers and cow skulls, etc., so there is a lot of room for Quirky.
I think they are fun and would look great on a wall.
…is this badass, theory-deep girl guitarist who looks kinda like Dawn from Buffy the Vampire named Maddie Rice. She looks like she’s 14 when she gets camera time with Jon Bastiste and Stay Human. But if Batiste will have her, she must have top chops. He’s brilliant.
I just saw Jeff Beck, with Buddy Guy opening. Guy was a ton of fun, running out deep into the crowd playing blazing guitar on a wireless rig. When Beck’s turn came, he was tied to a cable the whole show (and he was beyond awesome, amazing player).
So: are there drawbacks to running guitar wireless that would make a player like Beck prefer being tethered? Reduced dynamic range? A perceptible propagation delay between the guitar and the amp? Or maybe just a pure, old-school preference for keeping the signal chain pure analog?
I know there are reasons to go one way or the other. Angus Young’s sound is supposedly influenced mainly by his wireless transmitter which acts as a pre-amp (beyond the obvious sound imparted by his fingers, SG and Marshalls). They even make expensive replica pedals that impart that wireless preamp tone (search for Schaffer replica).
I had no idea. Man, tone geeks really do need to geek, don’t they? Thanks for sharing that.
I do know that Beck has a special set of John Suhr-wound pickups (formerly of the Fender Custom Shop; now has his own brand) that he uses pretty much exclusively. I recall how he bopped his guitar and the body split and he made sure the pickups weren’t hurt and the full wiring harness was transferred into the new body. Pretty sure they have some sort of wireless/noise cancelling “dead coil” included in the set up but can’t recall. Here is a link where Suhr discusses them on a forum on his company’s website: Suhr :: View topic - Jeff Beck's 11k pickups by ?
And apparently his Marshall is one that is special to him and that he fusses over.
Anyway, the point is that Beck has such a specific, complex technique and requires a certain type of responsiveness, that I am sure something like a wireless rig would throw all of that off.
Buddy Guy, on the other hand, was know for using 100 ft long guitar cords back in the day so he could do what he does now using a wireless. He isn’t nearly as persnickety about his rig. But man is he wonderful. To each their own!
I saw them in the DC area a couple of weeks ago and here is the review I posted on my FB page:
Great show, unbelievable to have these two legends on the same bill. Buddy at 79 has as much energy as ever. He did a lot of singing, with a scattered medley of pieces of classic blues tunes. His guitar playing was front and center, with huge range and expression. His guitarist stepped out for a flashy extended solo, including a gimmicky windmill spin of his guitar around the strap button. Buddy was conversational but didn’t get all wrapped up in his own stories, preferring for the most part to let six strings do the talking. He strolled up the aisle with a wireless rig, playing and singing as he made a full circuit around the orchestra section.
Jeff Beck played a couple of his well-known hits (Freeway Jam, 'Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers) as well as showcasing his new accompanists, vocalist Rosie Bones and guitarist Carmen Vandenberg, who have been performing as the UK duo Bones. Bones did this sort of hip-hop dance routine in a military paratrooper type outfit. I didn’t care for her dancing, or her singing; sounded to me like someone who inhaled helium first. Vandenberg was put out front for a solo in one tune; credible but not remarkable. He also brought out vocalist Jimmy Hall (also known for fronting Wet Willie) for several tunes. Beck spent most of the night on his all-white Strat (a right-handed axe oddly fitted with a left-handed neck), trading it briefly for an all-white Tele, and for one tune playing slide on an oil can guitar (I was too far away to see what make, or maybe it was even custom). He had as much facility as ever, and from the vantage point of my seat he could have as easily been half his actual 72 years. Great show but Beck did not make himself the focus of the show as I had hoped.
At my show he did play a non-reverse headstock strat (vintage-white-on-white, natch) for a song or two, before switching to the reverse headstock version for pretty much the rest of the show. The exception, as CookingWithGas noted, was a single song where he pulled out first a white tele to start, then traded to a small-square-body red sunburst guitar (I was row 19, couldn’t tell more about that axe) that he played slide on (Beck plays slide? Okay, sure: Beck can probably play anything).
I also didn’t care for Bones much. Nothing wrong with her, just didn’t grab me. And when Beck jumped in, everything else but the rhythm section always faded to irrelevance, always. There was also a very tall longhair dude that did heavy vocal lifting as lead, switching off with Bones, who I really warmed up to when his second turn was a Sam Cooke tune (forget which) that he cooked on quite well. I assume this was Jimmy Hall, no idea.