There’s a fair chance you’ve never heard of Pete Traynor. But if you live in Toronto, you’ve probably heard his work, in a way.

He was a walking piece of local rock and roll history, whose personal and professional story includes cameos by Bo Diddley, Robbie Robertson, John Lennon, Steve Miller and even the guitarists for Lady Gaga and Prince.

He played bass at the dawn of rock music in the 1950s, gigging three or four times a night in a city starved for working musicians, but it was as a designer of amplifiers and live music equipment that he had the most influence. As Christopher Hume wrote for the Star in 1997, “The sound of Toronto rock was the sound of Traynor equipment.”

Traynor died over the weekend at the age of 75, found dead at his home near Lake Simcoe by a neighbour, according to his nephew, Neil Traynor. The cause of death is still being determined and funeral arrangements are not yet set.

As the news spread Monday, tributes started coming in from musicians on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. Most Canadian rockers have or had a piece of gear with his name on it, and many shared photos showing the proof.

“It means so much to me, and to the whole family, to know that he meant so much to so many people,” Neil Traynor said. A musician himself, he says the advice, help and 1968 Les Paul Goldtop that Pete gave him for his 19th birthday are emblematic of the influence he had on musicians.

Pete Traynor dropped out of high school at 16 to earn a living as a musician, and played early on in bands with future stars Ronnie “The Hawk” Hawkins and Robbie Robertson (later of The Band). Back then, amplifiers were testy things that often blew out, and Traynor, son of an engineer, learned to repair and upgrade his own, often with broadcast and cinema-sound parts, so it would play longer and louder and better.

His own customized amp was so powerful, a story he told goes, that at one gig Bo Diddley challenged him to a “my-amp-is-bigger-than-yours” contest, and Traynor shattered all of the walls of the Edison Hotel’s mirrored rock ’n’ roll room.

He got hired as the repair man by Jack Long at Long & McQuade’s original store at Yonge and Yorkville. “He was, on top of everything else, the best amplifier repair man there ever was,” Long says of the “free spirit” customer he hired in a time of need.

Back then — as now — Long & McQuade was the place local musicians could go to buy or affordably rent sound equipment. It wasn’t long before Traynor and Long figured out what kind of gear people needed that wasn’t available. So Traynor started designing it himself, and the two men founded a company called Yorkville Sound to manufacture it.

“He was a brilliant guy in some ways,” Long says. “He had an uncanny ability to tell what kind of equipment people would need five years in the future, and to build it. Sometimes we could take advantage of its popularity, sometimes not; we were just a small outfit.”

A history of the company published in the 1990s claims several “firsts” for Traynor. In the early 1960s, there was no such thing as a portable PA system. So Traynor invented “sound column” speakers that could do the job for a friend’s band — and soon they became a standard piece of equipment around the world. Later, the history says, he’d invented wedge-angled monitor speakers, stand-mounted portable speakers, and a number of things too technically detailed for me to really understand.

He became somewhat famous for the crash tests he performed — throwing his amps off the second storey of the building, then replacing the glass tubes and seeing if they’d still work. If they passed the test, he put them into production, confident they could handle the abuse of a rock show.

Through the Long & McQuade connection, Traynor’s amps — and his repair and sound technician work — made him a household name among local musicians. But he also worked with and for celebrities passing through. He provided all the equipment for the massive show John Lennon and Eric Clapton played at Varsity Stadium in 1969. (Traynor told stories of Lennon asking him for a microphone cable long enough to stretch to the dressing room for a gimmick involving Yoko Ono). A guitar amp he built that would play to maximum volume with no distortion was a flop with rock musicians who liked the fuzzy noise, but a favourite of the Doobie Brothers’ Jeff Baxter. He cut a Hammond organ in half to make it portable for Ray Harrison of Del Shannon. The company history says it’s “rumoured” that Elvis custom-ordered a bunch of equipment for the opening of his Las Vegas run.

Nephew Neil recalls stories of Pete working with The Who, smoking up with Jimi Hendrix, and Clapton, and even Leonard Nimoy.

And one time Steve Miller (or a member of his entourage) locked him in a truck in rage after the amps he provided for a show blew out (because a tech had used the wrong fuses, it turned out). That episode led to the end of his sound-tech-for-hire business.

He retired with a bad back in 1976, but the company he founded is still a Canadian music mainstay. Yorkville phased out the Traynor brand after he left, but revived it for its amplifiers in 2000, in response to ongoing demand for the vintage Traynor products musicians still swore by. Among those giving endorsements on the company’s website is are Ricky Tillo, Lady Gaga’s touring guitarist, and Prince’s touring band guitarist Donna Grantis. And then there’s this, from Milos Angelov of Dave Matthews’ Band: “These amps should come with a box of tissues because the first 10 rows always get a nosebleed.”

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Those tissues would come in handy for a different reason now. Traynor’s legacy will live on in music circles. He’s beloved by those who knew him as a mentor and trouble-shooter.

But he’s one of those people, too, whose influence is invisibly ubiquitous — if you’ve played in a local band, or rented a PA for a wedding reception, or even just attended a live concert in a Toronto bar, you’ve encountered his work. Pete Traynor, the sound of Toronto rock, now passed into music history.

Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca . Follow: @thekeenanwire

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