Powering effects

[zeppman]

Hey guys-

I want to be able to power my effects using AC adaptors instead of batteries.  I see a lot of talk about these wall-wart things?  What are they? Basically I have a compressor, and I plan on building a tremelo next (and maybe one other pedal).  I want to have a board setup for these three pedals, and have them all powered by some kind of wall unit or AC power instead of batteries.  Any suggestions or links to share?  I have no clue how to go about getting the correct wall unit and stuff as far as current draw goes.  Thanks guys

[zeppman]

You mean to tell me everyone here powers their effects with 9v?   :lol:

[icurays1]

Well, im not 100% positive about this, but im fairly certain that you would just have to install a DC power jack into your circuit in place of the 9v battery snap.  Then, you have to get a wall adapter (those black chunky things you plug into the wall) or power supply that supplies 9 volts of power and has the same size plug as the one you put in your box.

[ninoman123]

Yah just solder a DC jack in place of the battery clip. Make sure your power supply is regulated to which voltage you want. Sometimes they say 9v and really arent. I blew up a few ICs because of that  :oops:

[onboard]

A wall wart is an AC adaptor. You plug into 110V AC and get whatever the adaptor is rated for - in this case 9V. Something to keep in mind is to make sure the adaptor is putting out regulated DC, otherwise you get noise city. The Boss PSA-120 is a good example of a regulated 9V adaptor.

If you want to really jump into some reading, go to geofex.com and look for "Power Supply Basics", then scroll most of the way down and look for "The Spyder" - a hum free pedalboard power supply.

General Guitar Gadgets is another placew to look. Go to Tech Pages, then look for Powering Effects.

IMO, a pedalboard supply would be the way to go instead of using individual AC adaptors.

edit Huh, looks like I type too slow or too much...now I feel stupid about (nasal teacher voice) "A wallwart is an AC adaptor"  :roll:

Anyway, I was going to add - as far as current goes - I think they start around 300mA and these circuits usually draw less than 10mA, so no worries.

[ninoman123]

you could get a boss psa adaptor, and daisy chain a bunch of dc plugs onto it, I use my noise supressor to do that for me, but those PSA adaptors are nice and you can run a buncha pedals on them.

[ethrbunny]

I use an 18V adaptor that I got from a cordless drill that died. It puts out nearly 1A. It needed a fair amount of filtering to be useful for 7809s but it does work great now.

[zeppman]

Onboard:

Won't too much current fry come ICs if they are rated at 10ma?

[onboard]

I wondered the same thing, and the way it was explained to me is that a circuit draws current, but can only accept so much voltage. In other words, you want to supply at least the necessary current your circuit will eat. If there's more available, that's ok. But you don't want to supply more than the necessary voltage.

Someone else please jump in if that doesn't make sense.

[pi22seven]

I use a One Spot from Visual Sound.

I love it bigtime!

[KORGULL]

Dunlop also has a power supply for pedals that looks real nice. It's called the DC Brick multi-power supply. It has seven 9V and three 18V outputs and you can use them all at once. It looks very compact and has different AC plugs available for whatever country you're in.

[petemoore]

I still mostly use batteries, WW's always give me noise problems...bought a buncha rechargables a long time ago...]

[zeppman]

pi22seven

Is the one spot noisey?  That looks nice.  I'm just worried about frying my pedals.

[zeppman]

So is too much current never an issue with wall units?

[JT1]

I use a Valvulator I  and it works great. It also contains a tube to bring  the
signal up to par so there is no loss.

[bryantabuteau]

one spot is a nice adapter, its a little switchmode supply with lots of filtering.  It was really quiet on my rig, and I was powering about 6 pedals from it, including 2 high gain devices.   Because its a switchmode device, it can cope with 110v as well as 240v supplies which is cool.