Hi all, I'm new to this forum so please forgive any errors of etiquette or protocol. I've been running my EB3 through a brand-new Traynor YBA200 + 4x10 Celestions at 8ohm. For 2 years I had nothing but praise for the amp - great tone, heaps of punch.
I haven't been running the amp hard, mainly rehearsals and maybe 20 or 30 club gigs. Last rehearsal I was running the amp at 4 gain, 4.5 master and PSSSHT - 3 tubes glowing like furnaces, 1 tube dead black and a puff of evil smelling smoke from the circuit board.
So I contact the dealer, get a repair authorisation number (VERY close to end of warranty!) and take the amp in. I've fried the filament supply ground ref' resistor, and blown or damaged several cathode resistors, and 1 6550 output tube is blown. This sounds a little weird to me, so I start forum trawling (thanks guys), and find some references to an adjustable bias mod. The Traynor reps here in Melbourne (Australia) haven't heard of this,
so I contact Traynor directly and they send me the schematics to forward to the tech, who goes ahead and performs that mod under warranty. So far, so good. I understand that the tubes have only a 1 year warranty, and I'll need to pay for the replacement 6550. That's fine.
Last week the tech calls and tells me that in fact I'll need to replace the entire quad, as only 1 from the original set has passed testing. I'm now facing a bill of AU$420 to get my head up and running, about a third of the value of the amp as bought new! I'm having trouble reconciling that with the 2 year 'even if you break it' warranty.
Does anyone else feel that there may be a problem with the design/quality control of the mk1 YBA200? - I think it should be possible to get more than 300 odd hours at moderate volume out of a set of tubes, and that the premature failure of one tube shouldn't cause a cascading clusterf*** which takes out two of its buddies and a significant chunk of circuit board. By way of contrast, I thrashed the hell out of my Hiwatt Custom 100 (guitar and bass) for 10 years with no complaints at all. Ditto a little 1950's Farfisa 30w practice amp.
I haven't been running the amp hard, mainly rehearsals and maybe 20 or 30 club gigs. Last rehearsal I was running the amp at 4 gain, 4.5 master and PSSSHT - 3 tubes glowing like furnaces, 1 tube dead black and a puff of evil smelling smoke from the circuit board.
So I contact the dealer, get a repair authorisation number (VERY close to end of warranty!) and take the amp in. I've fried the filament supply ground ref' resistor, and blown or damaged several cathode resistors, and 1 6550 output tube is blown. This sounds a little weird to me, so I start forum trawling (thanks guys), and find some references to an adjustable bias mod. The Traynor reps here in Melbourne (Australia) haven't heard of this,
so I contact Traynor directly and they send me the schematics to forward to the tech, who goes ahead and performs that mod under warranty. So far, so good. I understand that the tubes have only a 1 year warranty, and I'll need to pay for the replacement 6550. That's fine.
Last week the tech calls and tells me that in fact I'll need to replace the entire quad, as only 1 from the original set has passed testing. I'm now facing a bill of AU$420 to get my head up and running, about a third of the value of the amp as bought new! I'm having trouble reconciling that with the 2 year 'even if you break it' warranty.
Does anyone else feel that there may be a problem with the design/quality control of the mk1 YBA200? - I think it should be possible to get more than 300 odd hours at moderate volume out of a set of tubes, and that the premature failure of one tube shouldn't cause a cascading clusterf*** which takes out two of its buddies and a significant chunk of circuit board. By way of contrast, I thrashed the hell out of my Hiwatt Custom 100 (guitar and bass) for 10 years with no complaints at all. Ditto a little 1950's Farfisa 30w practice amp.
