Pedal Power Supplies Worth It?

[peteri]

Having one of those internal debates - I currently have a daisy chained pedal supply, works fine - no real noise issues, only thing I don't like is that the wiring is messy and you're often fighting on the layout (trying to get the wires to reach).

The obvious way to improve is get a power brick (Voodoo Labs etc) - are they actually worth the money? 100 quid seems steep, I know it's mains etc - but apart from the neater wiring would I really gain anything?

Cheers

Pete

[Sporky_McGuffin]

Not worth it if your only issue is the neatness of the cabling. The real point of the Pedal Power is the isolated outputs, and they're ony really of benefit with awkward pedals or if you're running some in front of the amp and some in the loop.

[Axe_meister]

I have to admit I personaly think that these power supplies are well over priced for what they are. Think how many standard power bricks you could get for the money.
However if you have lots of different power need, e.g 9v DC, 12v DC, 12v AC, etc then they do have their uses and much lighter than individual power bricks. If they are slim enough they can be tucked under your pedal board of of sight.

[Sporky_McGuffin]

They are not overpriced at all. They are expensive because they have a much higher count of much more expensive components than a cheap crap PSU that's just one supply with eight paralleled outputs.

They're unnecessary for most pedalboards, but that doesn't make them overpriced.

[Axe_meister]

Are 8 individual power bricks not 8 isolated supplies?
Once you add up all the costs for enclosures, transformers, diodes, resistors, etc
The 8 individual bricks are still cheaper to buy!

[DannyP]

You've probably seen my own thread on this, I'm looking at buying the Voodoo, because I need something that will really do the job properly.

The unit I'm replacing is the Harley Benton Power Plant. It was £32 and is reasonably well built for the price. But it doesn't have isolated outputs, so you get ground loops. The transformer is pretty unsophisticated and it emits a buzz that finds its way into the signal. Plus its not up to the job of running all the 9 and 12v pedals that it has outputs for, and the greater the load you place on it, the greater the buzz.

The buzz that it produces seems to be multiplied when the amp is mic'd through a PA.

I've reached the point where I'd rather shell out for something with a toroidal transformer and isolated outputs so that I can just put my noise issues behind me - especially at this point in my carrier when the band is moving away from pubs, functions and social clubs and into proper theatres.

[Sporky_McGuffin]

So buy eight power supplies and an eight way mains block. And see if you can fit that on a pedalboard.

But you're not goung to find a single output PSU of quality equivalent to a PP output for £19.

As I said, they're unnecessary for most pedalboards, but that doesn't mean they're overpriced.

[Axe_meister]

So buy eight power supplies and an eight way mains block. And see if you can fit that on a pedalboard.

But you're not goung to find a single output PSU of quality equivalent to a PP output for £19.

As I said, they're unnecessary for most pedalboards, but that doesn't mean they're overpriced.

Hence my comment on them being nice and compact ;0)

I guess it mainly comes down to supply and demand regarding price.

[Sporky_McGuffin]

Personally, I reckon cost of manufacture and cost of running a business probably factor into it.

[timmyo]

I'd had various on and off power niggles over the years (troublesome hum, unreliable wallwarts, being fed up of multiple sockets). A PP2+ (when I finally sucked it up and bore the cost) was well worth it in terms of taking all those issues away for a long time.

I eventually found its achilles heel (huge transformer hum induced in an unshielded wah inductor) so went another way, but if you have a fnacy wah with shielding, or no wah, then I think they are the dog's wotsits.