Canada’s Yorkville Sound has come a long way since its beginnings in the back room of the original Long & McQuade music store in downtown Toronto where, in 1963, co-founder Peter Traynor built the now-iconic Traynor DynaBass bass amplifier as a rugged, reliable alternative to the models of the day…
Today, Yorkville Sound designs and manufactures a full line of professional PA systems and loudspeakers, instrument amplifiers, installed audio systems, studio tools, microphones and accessories under its Apex, Traynor, and Applied Research and Technology (ART) brands, with 220 employees at the company’s 150,000-square-foot facility in Pickering, Ontario.
A leader in instrument amplification and a pioneer in loudspeaker horn and cabinet innovation, Yorkville Sound also distributes dozens of iconic pro audio and MI brands including Gibson, Epiphone, Ernie Ball Universal Audio, and Manley for Canada, and HK Audio and Hughes & Kettner for North America. In a remarkable career spanning 36 years, Yorkville Sound VP of internal affairs Brian Weafer has played a key role in propelling the company forward.
His background as a musician and engineer, complemented by his dedication to championing a close-knit corporate ethos that puts the needs of musicians first, has been pivotal in shaping the company's path, as Headliner discovers…
What is your favourite album of all time, and why?
The two greatest influences for me are Todd Rundgren and Joni Mitchell. For Todd Rundgren, it's always going to be Something, Anything. All the songs were so good. He played all the parts himself, he recorded it all himself. It was one of the very first of those kinds of albums, like Prince did and Stevie Wonder used to do.
For Joni Mitchell, it’s Hissing of Summer Lawns. First of all, Joni Mitchell is Canadian. She used to perform in a street called Yorkville in Toronto; it was the Haight-Ashbury, hippie neighborhood. The original music store for Long & McQuade – which were all part of the same company – was on Yonge Street, right at that corner of Yonge and Yorkville.
Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, all these people used to hang out on that street and play for nothing in those days. When our founders, Pete Traynor and Jack Long, started the company, they went outside and looked at the street sign, it said ‘Yorkville,’ so they called it Yorkville.