# Pedal Power



## lookitsmarc (Aug 16, 2008)

I'm looking at buying a power supply for my board and it looks as though the industry standard is the Voodoo Pedal Power 2+. I usually have between 5-8 pedals. I have a few questions:

Does anyone prefer a different supply?
How about Visual Sound's 1 spot?
How about that MXR DC Brick?
What is difference between the Voodoo Pedal Power 2 vs. Pedal Power 2+? I found a used non-plus version, is this any good? What's the difference.

Thanks.


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## ezcomes (Jul 28, 2008)

i have the godlyke version of the 1-spot...i like it...i get no noise, however i will admit that i run only one pedal at a time...sometimes two but thats it...i use it to power my wah, chorus, flanger and tuner, and DS-1...the DS-1 is only used as a solo boost...and the rest of them are buttery effects i use sparingly...

i like the godlyke...(1-spot)


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

I've also got a Godlyke and it does a good job for the price, but a couple things are causing me to lean towards the Voodoo Labs PP2:

1 - Daisy chain - sometimes you just can't stretch it to get to the pedals and it forces you to arrange them in a certain order that may or may not work for you. The PP2 has individual cables that run from the unit to each pedal

2 - Noise - I do run more than a couple at a time and when the compressor, OD and boost are on, it gets a bit noisey.

3 - Ability to jumper - I have a EHX DMM, a Fulltone FD2 and a Fulltone OCD that I want to power. The Godlyke cannot power the DMM, so it has it's own supply, and can only provide 9v to the Fulltones, which I prefer running at 18v, so they have their own supplies too. The PP2 can jumper two outputs to provide 18 or 24 volts with the correct adapter.

The only thing that I wish the PP2 had is more outputs. Jumpering 6 outputs leaves me with just 2 outputs to power the rest of my pedals, so I would have to use a daisy chain anyway, or run the OCD at 9v, which isn't a bad idea anyway.

As for the difference in the models, sorry, I can't comment on that.


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## Alien8 (Jan 8, 2009)

The PP2+ is great to cover most of the bases on a reasonably sized board- ie 4 to 16+ pedals depending on what types you have of course, and their power requirements and noise tendencies. I use it and like it.

The new Burkey Flatliner works well too, and has many options for many different power requirements. 

T-rex makes a decent power supply and they have a few different versions.

Further to that you can get into boards with permanent power supplies, like the Furman, SKB, and similar.

I've heard good and bad about the MXR, but it does seem versatile.

This article explains the differences of the PP2 vs the PP2+.

http://www.toneczareffects.com/downloads/features-ppwmod.pdf

Overall, there aren't many, if any at all that offer more than 8 outputs. If you run mainly BOSS style pedals you don't need anything more than a PP2 non plus. But if you get into the EHX, MOOG and FULLTONE of the world, you need a little more oomph, which the PP2+ has.


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## sivs (Aug 5, 2009)

I bought a used PP2+ earlier this year and have been thankful ever since. If you've got pedals that you think you're going to keep (and not get more) and you can run your stuff off of a cheaper supply, by all means do it. I read some not so great things about the dunlop, but it's probably fine and a bit cheaper. The Burkey Flatliner looks amazing and I'm sure it is, but it was just too much money for me to justify. The other ones by T-rex, Modtone.. I'm sure there are others that I can't think of.... look good, but if you've got a lead on a PP2 or PP2+ used, I'd definately recommend it.


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## zontar (Oct 25, 2007)

I use the 1-Spot to power 4 or 5 pedals, and haven't had any problems with it.


It works quite well, and the adapters are quite handy for different brands too.

And ezcomes, I use a DS-1 & a DF-2--one for a boost, as you do, and the other for some softer distortion.

I think one their strengths is that boost for solos/leads/etc.


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## Brennan (Apr 9, 2008)

I use the Dunlop (MXR) DC Brick myself ... I've never had any problems with it.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

1) It's child's play to wire yourself up some additional power patch-cables that reach where you need them to reach, or reach as many pedals as you need to reach, without unnecessary slack/bulk in the cable.

2) The vast majority of power supplies aimed at guitar players nowadays have enough regulation and current to feed lots of pedals with clean power. Where they differ is in terms of number of outputs, variety of available voltages, and _capacity to handle digital pedals_. 

That latter one is not a tall challenge, but a challenge nonetheless. Many players find they can conveniently power one digital pedal along with all their analog ones, but the moment they move to two digital pedals, all hell breaks loose. I can confirm this. Plug the same well-regulated PS into one of my Line 6 Tonecore pedals and everything is hunky dory. Plug it into two of them at once, and the setup becomes very noisy. 

The reason is that clock noise is traveling along the shared power line. Although the digital clock frequencies are normally well above human hearing, when the difference between clock frequencies in two separate units is small, the "sideband products" can become audible. Think of it like an unintended ring modulator. Pedal A is running at 100.0005mhz. Pedal B is running at 99.9995mhz. The sum of their clock frequencies is well out of range, but the difference between the clocks is 1khz, which you *can* hear. Since digital pedals can often have multiple clock signals governing different aspects, that means there can potentially be multiple sum and difference signals. Stick in a third pedal, and you can see that the noise possibilities increase, even though each pedal on its own is whisper quiet with the exact same power supply. There is really no way to know ahead of time if the differences between any two pedals will produce audible noise, since the problematic cases will be those where very miniscule component tolerances produce the slight clock differences that translate into audible noise (e.g., the sum/difference of 20mhz and 40mhz will not be audible at all).

Not knowing anything about the state of each revision of each of these supplies you've listed, all I can say is that you should try out a supply with at least 2 digital pedals powered up at the same time to verify that the design (or revised design) has attended to prevention of this shared-power-line clock noise. Preferably, they should be two or more pedals from the same series of products, because they will likely present the greatest risk of audible sideband products (since they will likely be running off the same DSP chip under the same generally platform; Line 6 modeler pedals are a frequent source of noise reports since many folks will have a delay and filter modeler, or similar, on their board).

I mention this because more and more, the larger companies are migrating to digital technology for their pedals. There are obvious ones, like Line 6. But there are not-so-obvious ones as well. For instance, the Princeton Technologies line of chips makes it cheap to produce delay-line pedals (like the ridiculously low-priced FAB Echo). Many of these will _describe_ themselves as if they were analog delays, but they are, at heart, digital pedals with filtering to simulate analog delay tone. So people can have multiple digital pedals without being aware of it. 

And as much as many will make it a point of principle to stay analog in their choices, companies like Electro-Harmonix are putting out some really interesting pedals these days that are digital without trumpetting them as such. The Holy Grail series is an obvious one. Many non tech-savvy players/owners are surprised to learn it is digital. And after years of exposure to the EHX Microsynth - which IS all analog - along comes the HOG and POG2, with some very similar (at least similarly labelled) features as the Microsynth, and the idea that one is actually using an all digital pedal is disconcerting. Boss, as well, has packaged a number of next-in-the-series favourites which have made the transition from analog to digital. The BF-2 flanger and PH-2 phaser are all analog, but the BF-3 and PH-3 _aren't_. Ibanez has made some digital chorus pedals, and certainly any reverb pedal which isn't big enough to house a set of springs, or use an MN3011 chip (that hasn't been made in over 25 years) will be digital.


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## Peter (Mar 25, 2008)

If we're using a daisy chain like a 1spot, could we still experience this problem with digital pedals and differing clock frequencies?


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

In theory, yes. Ideally, what you'd want would be something that inserts RF/EMI protection between each device receiving power from the same source. That could be at each output point from the brick itself (assuming each output runs to a unique pedal) or it could also be some *between* the individual plugs on a daisy-chain cable. I'll see if I can find out some more about it, and post back.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

I posted the question on the DIY forum, and got a few replies. RG Keen suggested using several paralleled caps between plugs.

"Maybe the best simple thing is a parallel-capacitor setup with a small series resistor. 100uF in parallel with 0.1uF monolithic ceramic in parallel with 0.01 mono ceramic in parallel with 0.001uF mono ceramic is a good way to start. Each of the caps picks up being capacitive when the previous one has turned inductive."

Note that these would be inserted between each plug in a daisy-chain cable. The caps act essentially like "treble-cut" filters. In this particular instance, the treble being cut is the high-frequency noise travelling along the shared power line. I'll have to try it out and see if it works as intended. I have a couple of DIY daisy-chain cables. I can insert the caps between the last two plugs and see if, in comparison to the first two plugs, it reduces "chatter" when using two digital pedals at once. That'd be nice if it did, because I'd prefer to use one common power supply for everything.


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## customtone (Aug 6, 2009)

I have researched others on line and none of them so far, claime to or state to have fully Isolated supplies. The voodoo Labs is the only one with fully isolated power supplies. Meaning that each one has it's own seperate ground, which is what you want for quiet and efficient operation. Therefore you would have to conclude that the voodoo labs is the best bang for your buck. Check out my site athttp://www.customguitartone.com


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## Ripper (Jul 1, 2006)

I've been using laptop computer power supplies for years to power my pedalboards and have never had a noise/interference problem. They are cheap, they are small and they work really well and provide all the current that multiple pedals require.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

I'm guessing that no more than one of your pedals (and probably none of them) is digital, then, because the likelihood of godawful noise is high once you use a supply like that to power non-analog stuff.


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## Ripper (Jul 1, 2006)

Why? They may be a switching power supply but if you do your homework and get ones that are better quality (HP, Dell, IBM) they are designed to eliminate some of the potential drawbacks to a switching supply. They are highly filtered as laptops are highly sensitive to emi etc. The use very good emi filters as well as RF shielding and are designed to avoid feeding switching noise back into the ac power source. A bonus is that most of these power supplies have an adjustable voltage control inside so you can tailor it to the needs of your specific pedals. If you check around the net you'll find that I'm not the only one who uses them with the same results I have been getting.

Depending on which pedal board I'm using I most definitely do have some digital pedals on the board.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

How do you do the power sharing when multiple digital pedals are in use? because if you're doing something that stops the clock whine I get when 2 digital pedals are used with ANY supply, I wanna know about it.


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## Guest (Aug 28, 2009)

Ripper said:


> Why? They may be a switching power supply but if you do your homework and get ones that are better quality (HP, Dell, IBM) they are designed to eliminate some of the potential drawbacks to a switching supply. They are highly filtered as laptops are highly sensitive to emi etc. The use very good emi filters as well as RF shielding and are designed to avoid feeding switching noise back into the ac power source. A bonus is that most of these power supplies have an adjustable voltage control inside so you can tailor it to the needs of your specific pedals. If you check around the net you'll find that I'm not the only one who uses them with the same results I have been getting.
> 
> Depending on which pedal board I'm using I most definitely do have some digital pedals on the board.


The trouble I've always encountered when trying to use compute PSUs to power pedals is that they share a ground plane between all the connectors. This is fine when you've got well behaved computer parts connected together. But pedals aren't usually well behaved. Do you your own line isolation when you use these supplies to keep noise introduced on the ground by one pedal from being amplified by another?


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## Ripper (Jul 1, 2006)

The only thing I do is that I connect the output of the power supply to a screw type terminal strip ( http://www.nexternal.com/gpmstore/images/14260.gif along these lines)that has half the contacts connected to the + and the other half the the -. I run an electroylic cap (I'd have to check for sure, but I think i'm using a 33uf) across the postive and negative sides of the block and just connect the amount of power connectors for the amount of pedals I have. It makes it easy to tailor lengths and number of power connectors I have honestly never had any noise issues or ground loop issues. 

I have run this for years and couldn't even begin to tell you the different combos of pedals etc that I have had on these boards. I've run pedals and digital effects processors off the same board/power supplies and I've run two processors side by side off the same power supply.


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## Guest (Aug 28, 2009)

Ripper said:


> The only thing I do is that I connect the output of the power supply to a screw type terminal strip ( http://www.nexternal.com/gpmstore/images/14260.gif along these lines)that has half the contacts connected to the + and the other half the the -. I run an electroylic cap (I'd have to check for sure, but I think i'm using a 33uf) across the postive and negative sides of the block and just connect the amount of power connectors for the amount of pedals I have. It makes it easy to tailor lengths and number of power connectors I have honestly never had any noise issues or ground loop issues.


Cool. I've tried filter caps to take some of the ripple out of the DC but it's never worked well for me.



> I have run this for years and couldn't even begin to tell you the different combos of pedals etc that I have had on these boards. I've run pedals and digital effects processors off the same board/power supplies and I've run two processors side by side off the same power supply.


I'll have to revisit this. I'll admit the last time I tried this was with an older 486-era PSU. I've not tried this with the latest and greatest PSUs.


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## Ripper (Jul 1, 2006)

iaresee said:


> I'll have to revisit this. I'll admit the last time I tried this was with an older 486-era PSU. I've not tried this with the latest and greatest PSUs.


I'm not using brand new laptop supplies. I think most of mine came off of PII era machines.


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## Grandpa Simpson (Oct 7, 2008)

i use the one spot with a danelectro noise free adapter
its perfect


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## archaeic_bloke (Jul 30, 2009)

i really liked the boss daisy chain technique.. even though only 3 of my poedals were boss.. i modded the the thing plug into my other ones as well.. as long as the pedal accepts 9V battery its all good.

and a permanent mod conneciton is the nuts.


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## octofour (Feb 17, 2009)

I use the Voodoo labs, never had problem with it


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## customtone (Aug 6, 2009)

The power plus 2 is the only one, based on my research that claims to have true isolation between each individual supply. Which makes it truly the quietest supply on the market. None of the others tell you wether or not theirs is isolated. They just seem to give a vague idea if you ask. For the money, I'd go with the PP-2. The best bang for your buck. Hiowever, Be carefull and make sure you know everything about it before you hook it up. Guys have blown pedals because they didn't read the operaters manual to learn that some of the supply jacks can be switched between positive and negative sleeve. I only learned about this because I'v been researching to build a supply to market. Check out my site at http://www.customguitartone.com


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## bduguay (Jul 15, 2009)

Well now you have to tell us all about this power supply you're working on.hwopv
There's nothing I like better than buying Canadian products!:smilie_flagge17:
B.


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## keto (May 23, 2006)

I have 2 @ DC Bricks on my board, I like them because they give both 9v and 18v ports. They run cool and they run quiet with whatever I throw at them. Pretty reasonably priced, around $120 iirc


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