DIY Power Conditioner?

[Davefx]

Hey all, was wondering if anyone has ever designed a power conditioner, as a DIY sollution for a Furman? I play some bars where their smoke eaters cause "serial firecracker" noises in my system. It sucks, and can't be good on my electronics I'm sure! Any simple sollution? MOV's? Or should I just bend over and buy a Furman?

Thanks as usual.  

[R.G.]

Good power line noise suppression is expensive or heavy, or both.

A slam-dunk solution is to find a constant-voltage (ferroresonant) transformer setup with the right AC voltage out, preferably "harmonic-neutralized", which means "it puts out sine waves, not squared-off sines". The down side to this is that one big enough to run your system may be heavy. Really heavy, maybe 50-100lb.

You can try suppression stuff. You will need high voltage 'cross-the-AC-line rated AC caps, common mode chokes, more AC line rated caps, and then MOVs. MOVs are really only good when transient noise exceeds the peak of the AC voltage.

Do you *know* that the smoke eaters are not  radiating the spikes into your system? Sparks from the ozone generators in those things are pretty wicked RF spike genertors.

[Davefx]

Thanks RG!!!  I now rest my querey!  )

[R.G.]

Having said that, I promptly ran into "power line conditioners" for $100 to $200 each that offer filtering, MOVs and what looks like tap changing for keeping power line voltage within bounds. I think it was Brigar Electronics.

I don't know what Furmans cost.

I've seen constant voltage ferros on ebay for cheap, but they are ***heavy*** so shipping may be a bear.