I own a Traynor TS-50b and a client I recently had in my studio also has one. He had his plugged up but switched to mine so we could clean out a few noisy pots on his and we noticed that the two amps sounded quite a bit different. The output of mine was higher and it had more body/punch/whatever. His sounded a little bit spitty in the high end. Since we had his opened up already for the cleaning, I cracked mine and they looked quite a bit different inside. I'm no electronics expert, but we did notice a thermistor installed on his that wasn't in mine. The two layouts were different enough that I had a hard time telling which components corresponded in the two amps.

I was wondering how much these changed over the years and if this tonal difference is common or an anomaly. I wrote down the serial numbers of each, but I'm not sure which is which right now:

9120686
4012230

i wonder if one of those was one of my old ts50b's.

i had two that also sounded very different. the traynor ts120b also sounded different. i kept the best sounding of the three and sold the other ts50b, and the other ts120b.

it happens though. the one i kept sounds like we all know and expect one to sound. the ts50b i sold was a little fuzzier when the gain was cranked, and a little lighter on the low end output. the ts120b was about the same on gain but the tone was far more nasal.

Here are the innards of #0122093

schematic:

There were some changes made along the way. I don't know what they all are but my TS-50b had a few extra capacitors and a few values may have been different.

I'll need to ask my buddy that has helped me work on mine... I'll pass him this thread. Maybe he'll chime in.

bringing back an old thread...

i just opened up my ts50b for a recap (replaced all the electrolytics, bumped the 4.7uf signal path caps up to 10uf panasonic FC's because that was the closest thing I had on hand) after the recap it still sounds great, a tiny bit clearer in a good way.

not sure if anyone else has seen this but my ts50b has an lf351 opamp instead of the TL071. i think I am going to socket the opamp and try a TL071 and some others.

BTW, the Rusty Box uses sockets for the DIPs so you may swap out for different types.

they ship with TL072s

did you play around with swapping opamps at all in the circuit? only swap I have done was a 4558 in a tube screamer, did make a noticeable difference but it still sounded like a tube screamer.