ratherdashing
Kablamminator
My band is playing a tiny venue on Friday, and even if I could fit the Stiletto on stage it would be way too loud. I decided the best thing would be to rent a smaller amp for this gig, and of the choices available I chose the Traynor YCV20WR, a small 1x12 all-tube combo. It has all the features I need and the size and power rating are about right for the gig.
Specs:
- 15 watts Class A from two 6BQ5 (basically EL84) tubes
- Two channels, clean and gain, with boost on gain channel
- Gain and volume for each channel
- Master treble, mid, bass
- Bright switch on clean channel
- Accutronics spring reverb (which I never used)
- Series effects loop
- Footswitch for channel select and gain boost
- Ext. speaker out, headphone out, XLR DI out (haven't used any of these)
- Celestion Greenback in a small open back cab.
- Wine red tolex with wheat grill
I've done two rehearsals with this thing. In the first rehearsal, the drummer was hitting hard (as he usually does) and the other guitarist had a half stack. In this situation, the Traynor was underpowered. The gain channel was loud enough, but I could not get the clean channel loud enough without running into power tube breakup. This is definitely a cool feature for some people, but I need a truly clean tone for some of our tunes.
The second rehearsal was different. This was our run-through for the small gig's set, so the drummer used lighter sticks and the other guitarist brought his Blues Junior (which sounded awesome btw). In this situation I had just enough power.
DISCLAIMER: None of the above is surprising, nor should it be considered a negative point. This is a small 15W amp, and it would be unfair to expect it to have tons of clean headroom. If I wanted that, I would have brought my Stiletto.
On to the tone. The strength of this amp is its clean tone, which is gorgeous. Not surprisingly, it sounds quite like a Vox AC-15, but it has a bit of a blackface feel to it as well. The speaker is a very good match, and the overall tone is quite balanced unless you like plenty of bass. My BD-2 pushed the clean channel into a very sweet open-sounding crunch. I also used my GE-7 as a solo/treble boost, which worked out quite nicely.
Tha gain channel is not as nice, but gets the job done. There's a very nice roar to this channel as you turn up the gain, and it never gets sloppy or farty like Fender's HR amps do at high gain. That said, this is definitely not a high gain amp. Again though, that's not surprising - it's just not meant to be one.
I'm not a fan of master tone controls for two-channel amps, but that isn't really an issue with the YCV20WR, mainly because the tone controls are very limited. If you're used to tone controls with a huge amount of boost and cut (like Mesa amps have) you will find these to be very subtle. Treble and mid can sculpt the tone to a certain degree, and you will never get into icepick territory by cranking the treble. I am not convinced the bass control does anything. The good side of this is the amp's fundamental tone is very good, and you probably won't find a need to do a lot of boosting and cutting.
Construction and build: it's a Traynor, which pretty much says it all. They build their amps to withstand a lot of abuse, and this is no exception. There are some plastic jacks on the back that concern me a bit, but at least Traynor had the foresight to use a proper chromed steel jack for the input - the one that will get the most use. Overall, it's a very well-designed and well-built amp.
It's a simple amp that does clean and light crunch very well, and it seems to get along great with OD pedals. If you're looking for a lot of versatility, you won't find it with the amp alone, but with the right set of pedals you could definitely get a lot of great tones out of this little guy. As long as you don't expect a lot of clean headroom and a crushing high gain tone with huge lows, you will be very happy with the YCV20WR.
Specs:
- 15 watts Class A from two 6BQ5 (basically EL84) tubes
- Two channels, clean and gain, with boost on gain channel
- Gain and volume for each channel
- Master treble, mid, bass
- Bright switch on clean channel
- Accutronics spring reverb (which I never used)
- Series effects loop
- Footswitch for channel select and gain boost
- Ext. speaker out, headphone out, XLR DI out (haven't used any of these)
- Celestion Greenback in a small open back cab.
- Wine red tolex with wheat grill
I've done two rehearsals with this thing. In the first rehearsal, the drummer was hitting hard (as he usually does) and the other guitarist had a half stack. In this situation, the Traynor was underpowered. The gain channel was loud enough, but I could not get the clean channel loud enough without running into power tube breakup. This is definitely a cool feature for some people, but I need a truly clean tone for some of our tunes.
The second rehearsal was different. This was our run-through for the small gig's set, so the drummer used lighter sticks and the other guitarist brought his Blues Junior (which sounded awesome btw). In this situation I had just enough power.
DISCLAIMER: None of the above is surprising, nor should it be considered a negative point. This is a small 15W amp, and it would be unfair to expect it to have tons of clean headroom. If I wanted that, I would have brought my Stiletto.
On to the tone. The strength of this amp is its clean tone, which is gorgeous. Not surprisingly, it sounds quite like a Vox AC-15, but it has a bit of a blackface feel to it as well. The speaker is a very good match, and the overall tone is quite balanced unless you like plenty of bass. My BD-2 pushed the clean channel into a very sweet open-sounding crunch. I also used my GE-7 as a solo/treble boost, which worked out quite nicely.
Tha gain channel is not as nice, but gets the job done. There's a very nice roar to this channel as you turn up the gain, and it never gets sloppy or farty like Fender's HR amps do at high gain. That said, this is definitely not a high gain amp. Again though, that's not surprising - it's just not meant to be one.
I'm not a fan of master tone controls for two-channel amps, but that isn't really an issue with the YCV20WR, mainly because the tone controls are very limited. If you're used to tone controls with a huge amount of boost and cut (like Mesa amps have) you will find these to be very subtle. Treble and mid can sculpt the tone to a certain degree, and you will never get into icepick territory by cranking the treble. I am not convinced the bass control does anything. The good side of this is the amp's fundamental tone is very good, and you probably won't find a need to do a lot of boosting and cutting.
Construction and build: it's a Traynor, which pretty much says it all. They build their amps to withstand a lot of abuse, and this is no exception. There are some plastic jacks on the back that concern me a bit, but at least Traynor had the foresight to use a proper chromed steel jack for the input - the one that will get the most use. Overall, it's a very well-designed and well-built amp.
It's a simple amp that does clean and light crunch very well, and it seems to get along great with OD pedals. If you're looking for a lot of versatility, you won't find it with the amp alone, but with the right set of pedals you could definitely get a lot of great tones out of this little guy. As long as you don't expect a lot of clean headroom and a crushing high gain tone with huge lows, you will be very happy with the YCV20WR.
