Power Adapters for a Pedal Board

[slugman]

Hi all, I built a pedal board out of some cabinet parts. It houses a Boss Gigadelay, Boss Digital Dimension (kinda a chorus pedal), a Morley Bad Horsie, and an Engl tube preamp. All of these are plugged into a power strip.

Lately I've had some fairly bad noise with the thing. I didn't change the setup, so I was a bit surprised. I have two 9v adapters that I've soldered extra leads onto (one from a local electronics outfit, the other is the Morley adapeter). With either one, I get a noticeable hum from the Boss Digital Dimension. The Bad Horsie doesn't like the non Morley adapter.

Any good, cheap adapters or ways to power these things out there? I don't think it's reasonable to lay down a bunch of cash for one of these...

[ZOMB13]

I use an adapter called Power All, has 5 plugs for 5 pedals, works great and no hum,

I think it goes for around $30?

[Devo]

I have used powerbanks, individual adapters, I have even resoted to batteries for a gig once... everything let me down... until I found this little beauty

http://reviews.harmony-central.com/r...erstation/10/1

and I have never worried about pedal power issues again its 100% silent even in the noisiest RF areas and clubs that use those infernal mini lights that come with their own transformer... It will work in any country without the need for step-up or step down transformers as it accepts a whopping 90-264V AC input at 50-60Hz adn ouputs smooth noiseless 9V DC @ upto 3000mA ... which means about enough for 30 pedals.

Its pricey (£45) but nothing compared to the price of T-rex (£200) or Vodoo lab (£160 i think) stuff which arent half as powerful and are still massively sensitive (in my hands) to electrical noise.

Steve

Just thought Id add... I currently run a Morley bad horsie, keeley DS-1, peterson strobostomp, BBE sonic stomp, Boss DD20 off it (4.5 manufacturers) and every pedal works perfectly and silently...

[7Plagues]

i run a dunlop brick. it has 7 9V adapters, and 4 18v adapters i believe. i grabeed it used at GC for 50 bucks..very highly recommended.

[jb4674]

There are a few products out there in the market that will help you remedy the situation. Ebtech make the HumX, which many people seem to like because it gets rid of their noise. The next would be the Boss NS-2, which basically takes the dirty signal and attemps to clean it up. Although, this is a great pedal and many people swear by it, you really want to attack the noise at its source, and that is the electrical current. Ideally, you really want to run a nice line conditioner, so it prevents ground noise from filtering through the pedals. So, a nice power strip or rack mounted power supply will do the trick. Monster has the power pro bar (1000 and 2000), which has built-in filters that reduce noise and give you a cleaner signal.

Unfortunately, any time you have noise and you're trying to get rid of it you're going to wind up spending some money to achieve this. Keep in mind that noise is introduced in a number of ways and through several paths, so your power conditioners/line filters will take care of some of the problem but not completely. Cables can affect your signal, specially when you're using smaller cables to go in and out of effects boxes and joining them together.

I would discontinue the usage of those 9v adapter with the extra leads you soldered to them. The main reason why is because it is more likely that the leads are introducing more noise to your pedals than anything else. If some of your pedals came with power supplies, I would use them. If they are bulky, use a big power strip like the one I described above.

While I'm not encouraging you to spend money on monester products, I'm simply letting you know what's worked for me. Having spent at least a couple of thousand cables and power conditioners alone for my home theather, I can tell you it makes a difference.

Jimmy

[screamndemon69]

I bought a pedal pad pedal board with a courtesy outlet and a power brick with around 8 leads for standard 9v pedals that all hides neatly under the plates that the pedals sit on. Obviously not an option for you at this point, but damn they're cool boxes!

Other than the tube preamp (probably runs on 18v), the rest of your stuff can be ran off a TU-2 Boss tuner or similar pedal (I think someone said the NS-2 will also do the same multiple powering). Buy a 20-30 ft extension with a ground on it and two outlets on one end and viola!, you will have power to everything (if you buy the Ns-2 or Tu-2).

[rty13ibz98]

i use the visual sound one spot. it goes into a small skb pedal board, then one of the outputs goes into my boss tu-2 that feeds the rest of my pedals. pretty clean, but i don't use a tone of pedals either.

rich

[Gudster]

Originally Posted by Devo

I have used powerbanks, individual adapters, I have even resoted to batteries for a gig once... everything let me down... until I found this little beauty

http://reviews.harmony-central.com/r...erstation/10/1

and I have never worried about pedal power issues again its 100% silent even in the noisiest RF areas and clubs that use those infernal mini lights that come with their own transformer... It will work in any country without the need for step-up or step down transformers as it accepts a whopping 90-264V AC input at 50-60Hz adn ouputs smooth noiseless 9V DC @ upto 3000mA ... which means about enough for 30 pedals.

Its pricey (£45) but nothing compared to the price of T-rex (£200) or Vodoo lab (£160 i think) stuff which arent half as powerful and are still massively sensitive (in my hands) to electrical noise.

Steve

Just thought Id add... I currently run a Morley bad horsie, keeley DS-1, peterson strobostomp, BBE sonic stomp, Boss DD20 off it (4.5 manufacturers) and every pedal works perfectly and silently...

Ugh this thing. I want to warn everyone that the guy selling this "noise free" power supply is buying them for **** all from China and then putting a giant mark up on them.

How do I know? Well have a look at these -

Here is the Diago -
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v506/Gudster/DS.jpg

And here is the same adapter, bought off **** for £12
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v506/Gudster/od.jpg

They are IDENTICAL in every way. Except one say Diago and the other says Johnny Shredfreak. The specs and the components.

[Devo]

Hey if you can get em cheaper elsewhere then great... I wish I had known about that before I bought the Diago one... thanks for the tip

digital switch power supplies are still the only way to go, sure power conditioners will work, but with a switch you dont need them becuase theres no bleed through from ground..

you can make you own power conditioners for about $3, using something like this ...

http://www.muzique.com/lab/filter.htm


Make a seperate box that just passes the 9v from your power supply through the choke... and run your diasy chain out the other end... its not perfect but it will remove alot of dirt from your power line...

Just had a look on the bay and there are tons of "Switch" 9v power supplies... ranging in ouput from 1000 - 3000 mA any of those will completely eliminate ground noise from your signal.. and some are less than $5... well if it ever breaks I know where to get a replacement.... I just couldnt find these 9v digital switch type supplies three-four years ago...

[slugman]

To udpate this thread, before going the route of the OneSpot (you can get it for $35 with a bunch of leads from MF), I decided to see what exactly was going on. So I hooked my pedal board up to an oscilloscope.

100mv of noise was the lowest I could get without resorting to additional circuitry.

The Boss GigaDelay is absolutely quiet.

The Morley is quite when OFF. When on, its very noisy.

The Boss Digital Dimension is always humming.

Despite the recommendation to remove my homemade 3 plug adapter, it is actually less noisy than the Morley adapter. So I removed the Morley adapter.

I began adding capacitors between the positive and negative leads of the wall wort. Using larger sizes reduced the noise. But not quickly enough. I had to get a fist sized capacitor but the noise is still there.

A passive RC circuit is not the way to go. I need to try adding a regulator.

A regulator will smooth things out. Unfortunately a 9v regulator with a 9v input wont really work out, since the input to a regulator usually has to be a little higher than what the regulator puts out. So I should probably switch to a 12V wall wart and attach the 9v regulator to that.

Except I can't get a 9v regulator from any local electronics store. LM7805 is a 5v regulator. No luck finding a LM7809.

I can find an LM7808. 8 volts MIGHT power the pedals (in fact I suspect it would do just fine). The digital pedals probably have circuitry inside to step down to 5v anyway since most digital chips run off 3.3v or 5v.

I'm not sure about the Morley pedal.

If that doesn't work, I can stick two diodes on the ground leg of the 8v regulator. The regulator uses the ground leg to determine how high the output leg should be. The voltage across a diode drops 0.6v. So if I put two diodes in series on the ground leg, that makes 1.2v. So the pedals, which are hooked to ground itself, not the ground leg, will receive the output from the regulator which will be 1.2v+8v=9.2V which is pretty darn close.

The regulator is $0.65, and the diodes cost pennies, so I don't lose much money by trying this.

[waylay00]

I use the Voodoo Labs Pedal Power II Plus. Works great for me.