There's no need to be sorry, but the big smile, yes!!
They may not look "good", they may not be "trendy", but Traynor is reliable and solid, and especially cheap. To me it's a no brainer.
Oops, sorry.
The first amp I played through was my high school's 50 watt YBA combo. That was in the early 80s and it was considered ancient then, even though by today's standards it wasn't - I remember it was loud and very heavy. My next one was a small Traynor Bloc 40B combo around the mid 1980s that I used exclusively until about 2007 when I finally killed something inside it. I used that playing metal with a drummer and two guitar players all though high school, school bands, two years of jazz at university, a gigging country band, a couple of rock bands, a gigging celtic and rock group for about four years, and countless jam sessions. I think I blew the speaker, but after replacing it blew the new one, so the problem was probably something else, but after 23 or so years it didn't owe me a dime so I let him die. I've owned a few other Yorkville and Tranor combos and cabinets since, and I just recently sold a YBA-200.
What I've learned about Traynor bass amps is:
1) LOTS of clean headroom
2) not a lot of tonal colouring, pretty flat EQ
3) virtually indestructible, like seriously
4) tubes or solid state, they're much louder than I'd expect from anything else with the same power rating
5) inexpensive compared to pretty much anything else on the market, which I think is why they are so often overlooked or taken for granted.
Here in Canada, they have a sort of pedestrian branding, because they're so ubiquitous - everyone has owned one and you seem them everywhere. The used market here is flooded with them and their new prices are much much less than Ampeg or Fender or GK or for sure Mesa Boogie. Growing up in the 80s, they seemed to have had much the same emotional response from musicians as Peaveys did, they occupied pretty much the same place in the hierarchy with a lot of the same reputation for being indestructible, clean, and loud, but at the same time people seemed to me to feel a bit embarrassed that they weren't using something more famous, like Ampeg, Fender, Marshall, or whatever, so if you asked someone what kind of amp they had, they might reply with "oh, just a Traynor, for now anyway."
Having said that, aside from our many awesome big name bands that are relatively unknown outside of Canada**, Traynor amps are our #1 best kept music industry secret. Why as a country do we perpetuate anonymity and apologize for our best stuff??
**(like Tragically Hip, Northern Pikes, Blue Rodeo, Great Big Sea, Loverboy, April Wine, Kim Mitchell, Max Webster, Saga, Prism, David Wilcox, Sam Roberts, July Talk, The Tea Party, I Mother Earth, Bruce Cockburn, or Big Sugar to name a few - though some made it out to the world stage: I'm looking at you, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Rush, the Guess Who, Joni Mitchell, and Celine Dion - all of whom have *for sure* owned a Traynor amp at some point)
.
