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Strengths: Good sound, sweet reverb, fairly loud, 21 Ibs carryable!
Weaknesses: Too good of a deal. Makes me buy it! :-))
Summary: Traynor TRM30 Traynor Reverb Mate 30 Reverbmate 30 made in 2005 likely but I think it just arrived on a slow boat from China Feb. 2006. I just bought the amp after trying it out in the music store. It was tagged at $135 Canadian (taxes in) (roughly $115 U.S.) which made it the best bargain practice amp in the store in my estimation. I compared it with a tiny Marshall tagged around $100 Canadian ...no reverb and a small tinny speaker. Fender amps seemed to mostly cost more with less features.
The 10 inch speaker has a nice clean sound to it without being too tinny or too bottom heavy and the reverb is surprisingly pleasant. I'll likely use it for pop rock, traditional church choruses and old standard tunes. It seems fairly loud. I'm not sure I'd use it live with a drummer behind me, but otherwise I figure it has more volume than I'll need for small venues. The 4 band EQ is nice and the channels can be switched with a front button or with a simple foot switch that plugs in just below the input jack on the left.
That's one of the weird things about this amp ...the two left jacks appear to be two inputs but only the top jack is an input; the lower one is for the channel switching foot switch to plug into. Over on the right are two more jacks. I'm sure I'll use the phones-out jack to avoid disturbing my family at home and the line out jack might come in handy sometime. In the back of the amp, one of the three jacks will allow a foot switch to turn the reverb on and off. I doubt I'll be using the effects Send and Return jacks back there (post-EQ and pre-reverb says the manual) but someone might find them useful.
The other weird thing about the amp is the layout of the EQ knobs which go from left to right as hi-to-low (ie. backwards to convention). Whatever. Anyone who can read or hear the EQ working should be able to deal with that :-) At 21 Ibs. the amp is very "carry friendly". Oh yes, one other thing ...the printed Owner's Manual that came with it is one of those one-manual-covers-a-few-models type. At one point the TRM30 is listed as having a "Chorus Control" which it DOES NOT HAVE. The amp doesn't have chorus I guess somebody didn't do a good job of checking their work when they put the manual together.
I've been playing for decades and have owned multiple types and levels of amps/guitars. I've had various practice amps over the years but the features of the Traynor TRM30 vs. the price make this unit a likely keeper. I'd be looking to re-buy the same if I lost this amp.
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