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Traynor Custom Valve/YCV Lounge


Hulston Prickle

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Oh, yeah... it had to happen!

:thu:

 

All you Custom Valve owners, be they YCV 20, 40, or 80, now's your chance to share thoughts, experiences, tips, tricks, and clips with your fellow owners.

 

I know of several people on this board who own these amps and love them as much as I do. So, let's all get together and make a thread to rival some of the other Amp Lounges.

 

Settings, tube swaps, speaker swaps, mods, good pedal combinations...it's all fair game!

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The best thing I ever did was swap out the stock Sovtek tubes.

 

With the stock tubes the clean was harsh and boxy, and the overdrive was flat and fizzy. Still, the amp had potential. Thanks to Doug's Tubes, I put Tung Sol 12AX7 reissues in V1 and V2, and a Mullard 12AT7 NOS in V3 (the phase inverter). I put Tung Sol 5881 reissues in the power section.

 

Huge improvement! Granted, new tubes only improved on the basic sound of the amp; they didn't make it into a totally different amp. Now, though, I have pretty close to blackface cleans, and the overdrive is a terrific growly, throaty old Mesa with British twist. Think of the Mark series R2 sound with more gain and a more vintage voice.

 

I recommend a Weber MiniMass (or similar) attenuator to get your power tubes cooking and keep the volume reasonable.

 

I still have the stock speaker, but I want to change it. I know many of you have experimented and tried new speakers. Any suggestions or clips?

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Word on the street is that a Maxon OD808 makes a good boost for the Custom Valve 40. Any opinions?

 

I like to try a Danelectro Daddy-O occasionally in front of my YCV 40. As many of you know, the Daddy-O is a Marshall Guv'nor clone. I set the amp to channel 1, with gain at 3 or so and the master at 3, then the Daddy-O with volume maxed, bass at 11 O'clock, middle at 2 or 3 O'clock, treble at 12, and distortion at around 9 o'clock. Tweaked right you can get a great hot-rod Marshall or Mesa Stiletto sound!

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crank the yellow channel level, and use gain to adjust volume.

 

try all kinds of speakers. so far the weber chicago 10 owns.

 

I put no-name chinese unmatched tubes in. They sound better than the sovtek 5881's. Lose those now!!!

 

my 40 came with a mono cable for the footswitch. go get a stereo one.

 

route 66 OD with zero dist is a great clean boost

 

filtertrons kill with this beast

 

duane eddy tone with reverb cranked, bright switch engaged, and bass cranked.

 

that's about it. + ADA Rack delays are GREAT in the loop.

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My YCV 50 blue is great. I've been experimenting a little lately to find the range of tones and overdrive.

 

I might get a Weber mini-mass attenuator. I like the clean channel up with main on 10 to drive the power tubes. Too loud of course, for my basement studio.

 

I tried my son's Boss OS-2 in front of the amp. I guess its just not my cup of tea. I like the overdrive to come straight from the amp.

 

I am looking at a nice delay pedal though: Boss DD series, or the Line 6 thingy.

 

I still like my Peavey transtube 112 EFX. Its OK at low volume for piddling around. The Traynor really shines at louder volumes while the Peavey gets harsh.

 

Someone asked me about my amp recently. I told them I liked the raspy sound of the amp but would like another amp with creamier overdrive. I still might get another amp, but I would also like to try some different tubes for that perfect tone.

 

Also, I have not yet put an EQ in the effects loop. That might be interesting.

 

I generally prefer my ESP EC-1000 with JB/59 PUPs. Clear and smooth. My Peavey Raptor is a nice change with its SSH configuration. The single coil sound is just refreshing sometimes.

 

Apparently I need a variety of sounds, so while I really value the sound of this amp with guitar straight in, I will have to get out my Digitech GNX2 multi-effects. I found the most transparent patch I could get to just use for effects and wah.

 

I am about ready to get some clips on this board. Might look at the Sound Click site. I don't know much about that. I just learned how to convert my Audacity .wma files into .mp3.

 

Thanks for starting this thread.

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Traynor would sell a bundle of these if they came in head format. Or at least one - I'd buy it for sure.

 

Anyone have any clips of these doing straight up metal or some chugga-chugga? I realize the open back isn't very conducive to it, but it's worth a shot, right?

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Originally posted by emodot

Traynor would sell a bundle of these if they came in head format. Or at least one - I'd buy it for sure.


Anyone have any clips of these doing straight up metal or some chugga-chugga? I realize the open back isn't very conducive to it, but it's worth a shot, right?

 

 

It won't do it.

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Originally posted by emodot

Traynor would sell a bundle of these if they came in head format. Or at least one - I'd buy it for sure.


Anyone have any clips of these doing straight up metal or some chugga-chugga? I realize the open back isn't very conducive to it, but it's worth a shot, right?

 

 

I would LOVE to have a head version. As sucessful as these amps are, they should release one.

 

As for metal, I can get a decent 80's tone.

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Originally posted by flip333

My YCV 50 blue is great. I've been experimenting a little lately to find the range of tones and overdrive.


I might get a Weber mini-mass attenuator. I like the clean channel up with main on 10 to drive the power tubes. Too loud of course, for my basement studio.

 

 

I just got mine yesterday. So far so good. A little fizzy on the gain channel but I haven't put new tubes in yet. I'm just going to use some that I have here at home: Ruby EL34BSTR in the power amp, Tung-Sol 12AX7 RI in V1, Shuguang 12AX7C in V2, and JJ ECC803S in V3 (PI). I'm also going to try out a couple different speakers I have sitting around: a Celestion Century and a Century Vintage.

 

I do have a Weber attenuator: the Mass150. I hooked it up and it did improve on the tone somewhat. Not as much a difference as on some amps I've used, but I attribute that to the Traynor sounding really good at low volumes, so that's not necessarily a negative towards the amp. I only wish the cable connecting the speaker was a little longer... it was too short to sit the attenuator on top of the amp, but that can easily be fixed.

 

Another thing I did which helped tighten the low-end up was to put an EQ (MXR 10-band) in the loop. Then I backed off on the Bass on the amp itself and reboosted it after the preamp. I also tried an Electro Harmonix Black Finger (tube compressor) in front and it really improved the clean channel and lead sounds.

 

Today, if I have time, I'm going to do the tube change, maybe try out the different speakers, and hook up my Boss GT8 using the 4-cable-method to see how nicely they play with each other.

 

Matt

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Originally posted by Hulston Prickle



That head is pretty cool, but my ideal would be a 40/50 watt version with EL34 and 6L6 preset bias (like some Mesas). I like the sound of amps with 50 or less watts.

 

 

Well, it does have a low-power 30W mode.

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Originally posted by MCon


I just got mine yesterday. So far so good. A little fizzy on the gain channel but I haven't put new tubes in yet. I'm just going to use some that I have here at home: Ruby EL34BSTR in the power amp, Tung-Sol 12AX7 RI in V1, Shuguang 12AX7C in V2, and JJ ECC803S in V3 (PI). I'm also going to try out a couple different speakers I have sitting around: a Celestion Century and a Century Vintage.


Matt

 

 

Should be a good retube! I've heard good things about SED EL34s, too.

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Got the ycv40 with extension cab. I only use the clean channel with a zoom g7 running into it.

 

Haven't changed the stock tubes yet, but have a eurotubes 'blues option' set ready to go when needed.

 

Actually, the amp is way more power than I need at the moment, so I've been using a johnson loredo all-tuber for rehearsing. It's el84 powered/25 watts & allows me to crank 'er up moreso to get the power amp workin'.

 

d263865cf7.jpg

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Originally posted by Hulston Prickle



Should be a good retube! I've heard good things about SED EL34s, too.

 

I think those will be the next ones I try. I already had the Rubys at home so they don't require me whipping out my wallet. ;)

 

So anyway, I just did the retube and I am floored. I don't know if it was because the Sovtek preamp/EH EL34 combination of tubes were that bad or the Tung Sol/Shuguang/JJ preamp//Ruby EL34 combination is that good, but this has changed it from a decent sounding amp to a really, really good sounding amp (this from a guy who had a Diezel Einstein recently). Not as good as the Einstein, of course, but a great, great sounding amp for the price. Putting the MXR EQ in the loop with the bass boost (after the bass cut in the preamp) and a bit of an overall signal boost into the power section really fills the amp out as well and makes it much tighter.

 

I haven't done the speaker swap yet, I'm holding off a bit. I just ordered the matching extension cabinet so I'm going to try it with the dual V30s first. Then I'll try the Century Vintage/Century speakers in both the amp and the ext cab to see which combination of speakers sounds best.

 

Still haven't tried it with the GT8 yet. It's on my to-do list. ;)

 

Matt

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I'm a YCV-40 guy. I love that amp.

 

My mods:

 

1X12 ext cab.

 

SED power tubes

 

V30 speaker in the combo, stock 70/80 in the cab

 

Beam blocker in the combo

 

Ei gold pre amp tube in V1, JJ's in V2 and V3(splitter)

 

Currently running a Boss ME-50 in front for delay/chorus/flanger/wah/phaser/comp effects mostly. Occasionaly using the distortion buy mostly prefer the amps dist.

 

Pretty much the heaviest my band goes is AC/DC stuff and the amp is great for that. Mostly we play classic rock and some country stuff, for which it really excells. The clean channel is awesome and breaks up nicely around 4-5 volume with my humbuckers, can go to 6 with single coils and remains clean.

 

I've had one problem with the bypass circuit which had to be fixed(warranty), other than that its been a bulletproof rig.

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Originally posted by MCon

Did you do a before-and-after with the beam blocker? What were the main differences with it in the YCV40? I've got one of those sitting around that maybe I'll try in the amp.

 

 

Yeah, I had the amp for a couple years without the beam blockers and really had no complaints. When I added them it was just on a whim and I liked it. Knocked the very highest frequencies down just enough to "soften" the amp a little.

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What will improve tone the most?

I've wanting to swap the stock speaker to a greenback lately, but it is rather expensive. Thinking I'd maybe try to retube it first.

It's the first time I'm retubing, so I'm pretty new on this. What tubes do I need, and which do you recommend?

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