NAD Traynor Bassmaster YBA-4

Ben79 · Post by **Ben79** » Sat Apr 28, 2012 10:05 pm

Just bought one on ebay for Â£250. 15" combo format. Will maybe mod it a little to get some earlier break up.

Anyone else got/used/modded one of these or a YBA-1? Read very good things about them so far.

Gabriel · Post by **Gabriel** » Sat Apr 28, 2012 10:12 pm

I saw that the other day, looked ace. Need moar photos

Ben79 · Post by **Ben79** » Sun Apr 29, 2012 10:18 pm

► Show Spoiler

Didn't realise it was gonna be so big, something about the design makes it look smaller in photos than it actually is.

Haven't had a chance to run it at any volume yet but sounds very good clean. Nice warm and rounded transparent sound, not as sparkly as my SF bassman. Tone controls are more subtle than most amps. Gonna have to get loud before it breaks up, we'll see about that later in the week.

That Jay Turser SG junior cost me 80 quid secondhand, has a fixed neck, good action and a good sound - amazing.

Should be passing this amp on to my brother. If he doesn't want it I'll probably sell it on so let me know if you're interested (see classifieds).

laterallateral · Post by **laterallateral** » Sun Apr 29, 2012 10:55 pm

My main amp is a 1977 YBA-1 and I would never part with it. It sounds and behaves exactly the way I want an amp to.

Keep the volume below 9 o'clock and it'll chime and be sweet and bright for you. Push the volume passed 12 o'clock and it will get greasy and molten and sound like a Detroit muscle car. Jump the inputs and crank vol.2 passed 12 o'clock and it will hiss and spit at you and tear itself apart. Who the fuck needs channels and pre-gain when you've got pedals and volume knobs? lol

Add to the fact that they're built to survive WAR and hardly ever fail but can generally be serviced with hardware store parts and for fractions of half what they cost makes these old Traynors just make an awful lot of sense in these crappy economic times.

Ben79 · Post by **Ben79** » Sun Apr 29, 2012 11:48 pm

This is the later version of the yba4, 1977, so the circuit is slightly different to the yba1 and it has a smaller output transformer. I don't know what that means re the sound, perhaps slightly less clean headroom? We'll see. How do I jumper the channels? Have you modded your yba1 at all?

laterallateral · Post by **laterallateral** » Mon Apr 30, 2012 1:47 pm

Jumpering the inputs simply means bridging the guitar input into the bass or vice versa. If you have an instrument plugged into any given channel, the secondary input for that channel becomes a passive output, so you route a jumper cable from that (now) output to an input on the second channel and that causes both channels to cascade into one another and for both volumes to become interactive. I tend to have my instrument go into the low guitar input and have my high guitar go into my low bass.

The result is it cuts the highs and hypes the mids beyond what the eq normally could and you guessed it, gives you MOAR GAIN.

Mine has a minor tone stack mod done by Rick Onslow that replaces a stock resistor for another (I forget the values) that is supposed to even out the mids but aside from that and some changed caps and a 12AU7 running in V2 for a bit more headroom , the circuit is more or less stock. I did put new grillcloth on the headboard because the original was torn to shreds and I have no logo. You can see the jumpered inputs here.

Ben79 · Post by **Ben79** » Mon Apr 30, 2012 6:27 pm

Cheers for that, I'll give it a go.