When a company offers you thousands of dollars to hear the difference, or you spend big bucks to buy the product, you will convince yourself that you, too, can hear it.
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Question about pedal power and supply
- Thread starter agedhorse
- Start date
When a company offers you thousands of dollars to hear the difference, or you spend big bucks to buy the product, you will convince yourself that you, too, can hear it.
I actually own one of those aforementioned Vovox cables. I could not spot it in a double blind test anywhere in my signal chain if my life depended on it.
I don’t always use pedals, but when I do, I plug em up. I usually only use 1 or 2 pedals at a time. I must have something against batteries in general. I don’t like them in my basses either.
Disclaimer: I'm not much of an effects/pedalboard guy.
Short answer: avoiding batteries as much as possible.
Long answer:
Up until just a few short months ago the only pedal I used was a tuner of one brand or another. Even though they've always had the external power option, I always ran them on batteries. I just never liked having to set up a power strip to feed my amp and accessories (tuner).
Now that I've replaced the amp with a pre/DI, I really am liking the ones that are made by Radial. The most basic will run on phantom or 15v. The other one I've got is 15v only. My EBS MB II can run on phantom, 9v, or battery. I haven't bothered to install a battery in it. I'm still working with it, but my go to is the basic Radial StageDirect running on phantom power.
Ironic though that now, after all this time, I'm forced to set up a power strip since I'm in charge of our x32 Ultranet and wireless gear. My tuner now gets a power supply...finally.
Short answer: avoiding batteries as much as possible.
Long answer:
Up until just a few short months ago the only pedal I used was a tuner of one brand or another. Even though they've always had the external power option, I always ran them on batteries. I just never liked having to set up a power strip to feed my amp and accessories (tuner).
Now that I've replaced the amp with a pre/DI, I really am liking the ones that are made by Radial. The most basic will run on phantom or 15v. The other one I've got is 15v only. My EBS MB II can run on phantom, 9v, or battery. I haven't bothered to install a battery in it. I'm still working with it, but my go to is the basic Radial StageDirect running on phantom power.
Ironic though that now, after all this time, I'm forced to set up a power strip since I'm in charge of our x32 Ultranet and wireless gear. My tuner now gets a power supply...finally.
I haven't used batteries since getting a power supply. I have only had a few gigs where I have had a battery die on my board/in my wireless and on very rare occasion my bass - I think primarily because I am rather obsessive about checking these things. It has happened to me but I have seen it happen to our guitarists as well as other bands sharing the bill much more often than it has happened to me.
Insofar as the question of the days of 9V batteries coming to an end I would say yes. I see no reason to spend money on batteries or run the risk of one going bad/going dead. Even using rechargeable batteries is not something I particularly like although I do use rechargeable batteries in my wireless (AA's) and my bass (9V). On a pedal board where half of my pedals have the battery access on the bottom of the pedal (MXR, Zoom, et al.) having to change out a battery even during the course of regular maintenance is just one more inconvenience I would rather not engage in.
My .02 for what it is or isn't worth.
Another part of the equation is money. You can buy a 1-spot combo pack for $30 and it will power five pedals with ease. A few cycles of 9v batteries costs so much that it’s more economical to get into the less expensive power supplies.
I agree that the end of the 9v batteries is nigh. They are not as reliable as a power supply (e.g. you need to get new batteries before a show, or risk losing the pedal mid-act), they are rather expensive, and terrible environmentally unfriendly in comparison to power supplies. I own 4 pedalboards: a Helix LT, a medium sized (10 effects) board, a small one with 6 effects, and a nano with only 3 (tuner, compressor and delay). Not one of my pedals has a battery (or probably ever had any).
No batteries.
The only pedal I use with a battery is a stand-alone tuner I carry in my gigbag at all times. I play in 3-4 bands (it's complicated
) and use a pedalboard of some kind in two of them. I would never use batteries live.At home, if I want to try different loose pedals, I still use a power supply.
So, the fact a pedal can be powered from a battery is irrelevant.
Pedals and batteries... are on the way out, I think.
EDIT: ah! but I sometimes busk! I tend to only use a couple of pedals... and of course I'm restricted to using those that can be powered by batteries. But it's a bit of a niche situation and for my purposes I could play with no pedals at all.
So I guess my position is: I don't really care if they can take batteries or not, I wll not normally use batteries... but if a pedal can use batteries, then it's a bonus. Just not a bonus that I will make use of much, if at all
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I only use batteries in my bass and I wish I had options there to do otherwise. I like the ideas of having a power supply output on the amp to run pedals, having one that could somehow provide power to the bass through the input cord would be magically delicious.
When I was toting 15 pedals on a PT Pro I finally went through all of the production effects (DOD, Boss, MXR, etc) and remover all of the batteries. The pedal board was 5 lbs lighter!
Only those main production effects companies still support batteries. Many of the boutique pedals just don’t, and I don’t miss batteries at all. On a pedal board, where the pedals stay plugged in all the time, they are simply a non-starter. I use One Spots and daisy chain my pedals, very simple and effective for me. Another big win for SMPS in my book. I have an old 9V Boss-style wall wart supply that puts out 1A, the OneSpot puts out almost twice as much and is smaller, better behaved on the power strip, and weighs about 1/4 as much.
In fact, to be honest, watching someone connecting pedals on a gig and scrounging for batteries for them screams “NOOB!” to me. No offense, but that is my impression. Our acoustic guitarist is just getting into a few pedals now beyond her tuner and it is borderline painful to watch her futzing around with connecting the pedals every time and she’s already had a battery die on her in rehearsal.
Not to mention the environmental impact of all of those batteries. The 9-volt batteries in my basses come out when they test below ~8.6 volts and go into the smoke detectors in my house, where they are fine until they get down to ~7 volts, then I recycle them.
My little tuner takes AAA batteries. I have not taken to putting a tuner on my board yet, don’t want to sacrifice the real estate. Besides, my 25 yr old $16 Korg is going strong!
When I was toting 15 pedals on a PT Pro I finally went through all of the production effects (DOD, Boss, MXR, etc) and remover all of the batteries. The pedal board was 5 lbs lighter!
Only those main production effects companies still support batteries. Many of the boutique pedals just don’t, and I don’t miss batteries at all. On a pedal board, where the pedals stay plugged in all the time, they are simply a non-starter. I use One Spots and daisy chain my pedals, very simple and effective for me. Another big win for SMPS in my book. I have an old 9V Boss-style wall wart supply that puts out 1A, the OneSpot puts out almost twice as much and is smaller, better behaved on the power strip, and weighs about 1/4 as much.
In fact, to be honest, watching someone connecting pedals on a gig and scrounging for batteries for them screams “NOOB!” to me. No offense, but that is my impression. Our acoustic guitarist is just getting into a few pedals now beyond her tuner and it is borderline painful to watch her futzing around with connecting the pedals every time and she’s already had a battery die on her in rehearsal.
Not to mention the environmental impact of all of those batteries. The 9-volt batteries in my basses come out when they test below ~8.6 volts and go into the smoke detectors in my house, where they are fine until they get down to ~7 volts, then I recycle them.
My little tuner takes AAA batteries. I have not taken to putting a tuner on my board yet, don’t want to sacrifice the real estate. Besides, my 25 yr old $16 Korg is going strong!
I use a power supply, but still keep a battery in my bass case. I figure if the supply or cables go bad, I can quickly throw a battery in my tuner and bypass the rest of my board. In fact, the only piece of gear I use that is battery powered is a Snark tuner that I keep in the living room.
Oh, and I've never had any musical equipment ruined by a leaky battery.
Oh, and I've never had any musical equipment ruined by a leaky battery.
Sorry - I thought you meant that the TU-3 couldn’t be battery powered. But as for short battery life, that’s true enough - 9V battery power is no good to me either. I picked the TU-3 mainly for its ability to power other pedals, so I would have as tidy a board with as few cables as possible. With the TU-3, I can get away with a small wall wart and a single daisy-chain power cable.
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There could be two ground paths to an effects pedal. One is through the shield of the signal cable. The other is through the grounded leg of the power cable. Both come together at the pedal.
Naturally, this is a potential problem with powering multiple pedals from a common power supply on a pedalboard, don't know how big a deal it is in practice. Also, it should be possible to float one of the two grounds, but that's where it turns into more than a "just do it" design project.
Short circuit protection, electromagnetic compatibility, etc. Anything that goes in or out of an amp gets looked at during certification.
Agree. Although I definitely do AC for everything else, I still run my ST-300 tuner on a battery. Largely because I don’t always bring other pedals. But I pack that tuner along everywhere I go. So that’s the one pedal I need to be autonomous. And fortunately, the battery in an ST-300 lasts a very long time.
I keep LED flashlights in my tool boxes in my vehicles. I found Duracells and Procells (made by Duracell) were prone to leaking. even brand new ones in the packaging yet. I contacted Duracell customer support, and they told me there isn't any warranty coverage as it is considered abuse to expose their batteries to the temperature extremes encountered in a vehicle. I was somewhat pissed off by this, as they purport their product as being superior to everything else on the market.
Since then I switched to Eveready without any further problems. In fact, I've tried various other off-brands, TDK, Sanyo, offerings from Walmart and Costco, and just about everything holds up better to leakage than Duracell.
A power supply specific for pedal use shouldn't have any AC power ground reference; that's why wall warts were the favored supply- that, and they are cheap.
If I was to design a multiple pedal power supply, I would make every output isolated by an individual power transformer winding, and current limited with a PTC thermistor. This would isolate all the power supplies from each other and prevent loading the other outputs, should excessive current draw occur on one of the outputs.
This would also allow for reversed audio ground polarity on some vintage pedals that use pnp transistor circuits.
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Alright, you've scared me into swapping my preamp battery, though it doesn't seem low yet. It's been in there for a couple years.
One situation where I view battery power as more convenient is when I'm running sound for a show that has multiple acts with quick changeovers every 20 minutes or so. Guys that drag up a pedal board with 25 pedals that all have individual power supplies make me cringe when they request an AC distro to plug all this crap into for a 20 minute spot. Once this is finally hooked up, then they have to start troubleshooting their signal path on stage while everyone is waiting.
