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Pedal board power supply question

Tymophil

Tymophil

Aug 16, 2006
74
10
#1
I have a question about power supply for a pedal board...

I plan on building a pedal board including the Two Notes Le Bass preamp. It is 12V/500mA. I checked the most famous power supply brands (CIOKS, Voodoo Labs, Trex), and could find one with that exact specification.

The closest I found was a 12V/400mA... Is it a problem?

By the way, I want to add the following pedals to the same board : Empress Effects Compressor and a Source Audio SA226 Soundbox2 Orbital Mod. They seem to be regular 9V pedals, and should not be a problem...

Which power supply would you recommand?

Best regards.
 
#2
Tymophil,
You may want to write to some of these manufacturers and give them voltage and milliAmp numbers. I did this with Voodoo Labs and someone got back to me. In my case, I purchased the voodoo labs power plus 2 which had an extra outlet for a pedal which was 'special' so I plug that pedal in directly to the outlet. Good luck!
 
#3
Tymophil said:
The closest I found was a 12V/400mA... Is it a problem?
Click to expand...
Yes, that's a problem, 400mA is less than the 500mA your preamp requires. Pedals/preamps that contain tubes (valves) are always a problem to run with a pedalboard power supply because tubes need higher voltage and current than solid-state devices. Depending on how the power supply is made, hooking a 500mA load to it make make the power supply shut down, or the voltage will "sag" below 12 volts and cause your preamp to distort. There's some risk of damage to the power supply and to the preamp too.

If a power supply had two separate 400mA outputs, they could be paralleled together to provide 800mA @ 12 volts.
 
#4
Tymophil said:
I have a question about power supply for a pedal board...

I plan on building a pedal board including the Two Notes Le Bass preamp. It is 12V/500mA. I checked the most famous power supply brands (CIOKS, Voodoo Labs, Trex), and could find one with that exact specification.

The closest I found was a 12V/400mA... Is it a problem?

By the way, I want to add the following pedals to the same board : Empress Effects Compressor and a Source Audio SA226 Soundbox2 Orbital Mod. They seem to be regular 9V pedals, and should not be a problem...

Which power supply would you recommand?

Best regards.
Click to expand...

Check out the GigRig power supply
 
#5
You can have a look at this article about this : Invalid Link Removed

Most of the Cioks PSUs have 400mA outputs that are actually able to output more than that, provided the rest of the PSU is not overloaded. Same goes for the 1Spot pro.
 
#7
Most of the powersupplies with 200mA+ outputs should do for the Le Bass, when 'stacking' two outputs using a [Invalid or Expired Link Removed]. It does not cost much.

If I'm not mistaking, all of these power issues / solutions have been written about in the Le Bass topic on this forum and on the Two Notes support website (link provided above, by the immer helpful @Basstyra ).
 
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#9
You have two numbers to pay attention to when powering a pedal.

First is voltage. The voltage for most pedals is going to be 9 volts, 12 volts, or 18 volts. That number has to be exact. If the pedal wants to see a 12-volt supply, running it at a different voltage can damage the pedal or make it behave erratically. So always use the exact voltage called for.

The current, expressed as milliamps or mA, is the minimum current your pedal requires. But you can also use a power supply capable of delivering more current than the pedal requires too. So as long as the power supply is delivering at least 500mA, you're good to go. If your power supply is capable of something higher like a 9V at 1000mA (or 1 amp), that'll work too without risking damage to anything.

So to recap: (1) the voltage must be an exact match. (2) the current can be equal to or higher than what the pedal requires.
 
#10
I had a word with Two Notes about this and they assured me that the 1 Spot CS12 or the C7 are up to the job. They say that even the 200mA output is capable of delivering the required voltage as long as the total load doesn’t exceed the 1Spot’s amperage capacity. They said the VoodooLabs Pedal Power 2 could work but they were less confident about it than they were the 1 Spot. Although, I was originally attracted to the VoodooLabs because they have such a good reputation in the rock community I went for the 1Spot CS12. Mind you, The 1Spot’s rep is none too shabby either!
 

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