# Godlyke kills 3, maims 2 others



## High/Deaf (Aug 19, 2009)

My Godlyke Powerall switchmode power supply went postal last Saturday night and took out most of the pedalboard on its way. A high-pitched whine, some crackling, then dead quiet.

Dead are a 30 year old Boss flanger, a fairly new Boss Blues Driver with Keeley and Allums mods, an MXR EVH phaser. My Fulltone OCD and Xotic Effects EP3 Booster were damaged. I haven't taken them in to be looked at yet so I don't know the total extent of the damage, but I am far from impressed with Godlyke right now. :-(

And the worst part is - the Godlyke is still under warranty but I'm pretty sure all I can get is a replacement. The last thing I will ever want on my pedalboard now is a Godlyke product so the replacement is irrelevant, maybe even a little cruel. I probably will replace it just to make a point - and then crush the new one is some tribal ritual type thing.

Sorry, just wanted to vent. And wondering if anyone else has had any such experience, with Godlyke or other similar products.

Cheers.


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## bagpipe (Sep 19, 2006)

Ouch! Sorry to hear about that. Yeah, a warranty replacement Godlyke is the last thing you'd want!


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## blam (Feb 18, 2011)

wow, brutal.

glad i went with a pedal power, as it has isolated outputs.

here's hoping you can get your suff fixed at a low cost.


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## GuitarsCanada (Dec 30, 2005)

Major bummer indeed


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## Sneaky (Feb 14, 2006)

That sucks. I've always been kind of leery of those things. Now I will be fully leery.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Do you know what it was that "went" on the pedals? many of these devices have protection diodes in anticipation of misbehaving power supplies and batteries stuck in the wrong way.


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## High/Deaf (Aug 19, 2009)

Yes, I'm hoping they have something inside that is easily and inexpensively replaceable. If I can get them fixed, maybe I'll be able to afford/justify a regulated Pedal Power type device. I should just bite the bullet and buy one anyways, considering what a loaded pedalboard is worth.

But I've never had a problem like that with an analog wall-wart type power supply. They are noisier, but when they fail, they don't seem to go nuclear and take everything in a 20' radius with them!


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## blam (Feb 18, 2011)

you could alyways buy a used one. i see lots of PP2+ units and PP ISO 5s for ~100 on Mylespaul forums


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

I shall refer my friend RG Keen to this thread. He designed the One-Spot for Visual Sound (and a number of other things), so I think he'll be interested.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Here is RG's very thoughtful and interesting reply. I knew he wouldn't let you down. He's just that kinda guy. Hope it is helpful.
*******************************************************
Wow. Very bad luck indeed.

My personal suspicion is that this incident was a random failure of something in the primary/secondary isolation more than any built-in design flaw on Godlyke’s part.

We [ed. R.G. works for Visual Sound, which makes the original 1Spot] have been watchful for anything similar in the 1Spot for a long time, and I've actually tried to get it to fail in a fatal-to-pedals manner. Until recently have not found any failures that unequivocally could kill pedals. I think that Godlyke did just go get an off-the-shelf 9V supply to start with, but they may have improved it along the way. Don't know. In any case, I think it was probably safety inspected and certified, so a random failure is the most likely root cause instead of a built-in problem. As a designer, I have to prepare for the possibility that a 1Spot could fail catastrophically, if only that the statistics get you eventually. We sell many thousands of those a year.

Like any company that sells anything, we get a few people complaining about 1Spots as being ugly, nasty, failure prone, stinky, you name it, usually loudly and unprovably on internet forums. I think that may just reflect the fact that there are a huge number of them out there. There was a thread on [another forum] about a pedalboard that lost some pedals that were powered by a 1Spot. I did a postmortem, and have more to go, but that's what resulted in the advice here to cap daisy chain leads. *(SEE MY NOTE BELOW - M.H.)* Turns out that the 1Spot in question did have one of its two output caps go bad, which we found when we cracked it open, and that scenario could account for one of the pedals that died because of a design flaw in the pedal itself. It confused us for a while because the same 1Spot was still functioning properly after losing an output cap. So far, that was the first time we could really find forensic evidence that a failure in a 1Spot could have killed a pedal.

The internals of power supplies determine a lot about what comes out (well, duh...) but also what happens when there is a failure. In the case of the 1Spot, the internal architecture is such that the controller is running in flyback mode, and has to work at it to load energy into the transformer to get it transferred to the output in a separate step. It's quite different from a "forward converter" mode that is more like the common transformer plugged into the wall as regards what can come through in a fault. The flyback can only move over the packet that the controller thought it needed last time, and the forward converter moves everything over, the controller holding it back. I don't know if the Godlyke is a forward converter, but that's a possible explanation, maybe.

Also by design, the 1Spot shuts down rather than putting out too much current or voltage, and the stored-packet nature keeps it from running wild. So far, I've been unable to make one go nuts and put out more than it should. As a final measure if the controller goes nuts, there is a sacrificial zener on the output which clamps the output to a bit over 10V in all cases, allows it to "eat" output energy forced back into it, and to clamp possible external reverse drive.

But I'm blathering. I think the Godlyke thing was a random failure, possibly made worse by the internals, which I don't know about. I *do* know that some commercial pedals have built-in design weaknesses. For instance, some commercial stuff with internal digital converters to get 5V or 3.3V from 9Vdc used a converter controller with a 10.0000V absolute max spec on the converter. A fresh alkaline is 9.4-9.6V, so that's on the edge of death even on batteries. The 78xxx series will die if you put significant capacitance (100uF works for the 78L05) on the output then short the input.

That's the death syndrome in the pedal I looked into. They left out a diode from output to input to carry the output cap charge back to the input in case of an input short. What's interesting about that sudden-death scenario is that the common wisdom is that isolated-output power supplies are immune to sudden death. Not so in this case. They commonly use 78L09s, with an output cap on the isolated output. If either the 78L09 or the output fails shorted, or even just the connector and wire from the output, that just as nicely kills the 78L05 in a vulnerable pedal.

I could go on. It's a subject near and dear to my heart. But I think they were unlucky, and the internet is going to make that (in)famous.

**************************
NOTE: RG's comment was in reference to a thread found here: http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=90900.0
VERY worthwhile reading!!


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## High/Deaf (Aug 19, 2009)

Wow, alot of good information there. Thanks mhammer!

I, too, suspect it was a freak incident. If they had known issues, it would be spread far and wide via the internet. I should probably return it so Godlyke can possibly autopsy the pedal and rectify any issues that may be present. It's just that there's nothing really in it for me. I'm sure they will never do anything about the damaged pedals (what I really care about) but will probably give me a new supply (what I really don't care about and don't even want to pursue).

Oh well - as they say - shite happens! Just an unfortunate incident, but it could have been worse. I have another $1000 worth of pedals, including a couple of rare older ones, that didn't get zorched!

Cheers, and thanks again for the info.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

You're most welcome.

As noted earlier, the malfunctioning or nonfunctioning of the pedals in questions may well be easily and cheaply repaired. Keep in mind that none of those companies want their pedals being easily compromised in any sort of broad fashion that creates the impression among consumers that the pedal is placed beyond cost-effective repair by just about anything. So they tend to include components that will take the brunt of the assault and succumb, but be easily replaced. So, for example, many pedals will include a current-limiting resistor in series with the power connection (whether from battery or PS), and the resistor can also assume the role of fuse. the power makes it overheat, the resistor blows and looks ugly, but 3 minutes and a 1-cent piece later, you're back in business.


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