UNLIMITED POWER! A Guide To Pedal Power Supplies | The Science of Loud 

Powering pedals safely, efficiently and noiselessly can be challenging, but understanding different power supply technologies and electricity jargon can help make your decision easier when choosing the correct supply for your pedalboard Anasounds K+ Power Source - anasounds.com/k-plus-power-source/ How Do Spillways Work- Practical Engineering - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fjapgTd-QUg.html This video contains paid product placement from Anasounds #powersupply #effectspedal #anasounds More from CSGuitars: Gain access to exclusive content at: www.patreon.com/csguitars Join CSGuitars Discord - discord.gg/d7b6MY8 Buy CSGuitars Merchandise - www.csguitars.co.uk/store Website - www.csguitars.co.uk Contact - colin@csguitars.co.uk

Please do a video on guitar feedback: how to get it and how to cheat (with pedals).

Before anyone pulls up to the scene in the waaahmbulance, let the record show that your hair looks very nice.

This is so dummy proof and helpful. This would have saved me years of frustration. Had I seen this video at a younger age. I'm gonna have to share this with my students. Keep killing it you sexy Scottish dream!

10:45 As someone who designs electronics for a living i can say for a fact that designing a switch mode power supply that is quieter than a linear one is very much possible. Currently the lowest noise lab power supplies by extremely reputable brands like R&S and Keysight are switch mode .... and costly. I've had to design simple low noise SMPSs and with todays tech, that is not all that difficult. However those are more expensive than supplies not optimized for low noise. As Colin pointed out, having a supply designed for the task its going to be used is always critical!

I see Colin has good taste when it comes to whisky too

Love it when Colin drops a video on something I'd been meaning to look up but was just too lazy!

Always happy about a new upload Colin!

Colin "Having the correct voltage for your device is critical for safe operation" Eddie Van Halen "That's cute"

Dirty power ooh I hate filthy power! Samurai guitarist knows what I’m talking bout.

Discord squad! Also, this was the EXACT video I needed today while looking at power supplies. Cheers from Kansas, USA!

That was a lot of information that you managed to make understandable and interesting. You're the best at this and this video proves it once again !

Your videos give such great explanations for stuff I was, coincidentally enough, too afraid to ask. Thanks!

Brilliant,I’m really enjoying these videos as they really fill in a lot of blanks in my knowledge...great vid,keep up the great work...

A couple of years ago I spent around $50 and picked up a Lithium rechargeable battery by Joyo that’s purposed to power Fx pedals. It delivers 9v and up to 2,000 mA max. In addition to my main pedalboard, I have a second smaller pedalboard with about 6 or 7 pedals on it that all require 9v (-) center ground. The battery has a 6,000 mAh capacity and an LED status indicator. The one 9v DC out on the PS makes it necessary to daisy chain the power from the PS to each pedal. . This battery makes it easy peasy to power this board and I don’t have to be concerned about access to a free mains socket for my Fx pedal PS, ground loops or internal sources of AC mains noise from a step down transformer. I’ve always have had battery to spare even, if it’s a full four set live gig or an all day studio session call. The literature in the box the battery came in claims that I can expect at least 1,000 charge cycles as an indication of the duration of the battery’s life cycle. I suggest that one give this a go, especially if one has more than one board.

That was a perfect lesson on how they operate. As always I'm impressed bro.

Most concise, clear and comprehensive overview of pedal board power supplies out 🔥💯

Thanks for this!! Just received a new board and power supply yesterday and I could do with a refresher! Cheers mate!

The amount of gaps in my knowledge you just filled is amazing. Thanks brother.

Been trying to find this specific power supply for a while now!! So happy that you got the hookup !! Finally able to get one now

Can’t tell you how helpful your videos about pedal power are! 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻

This one's a keeper, Colin. Nicely done. Comprehensive. One of the difficulties with a great many wallwarts is that the criteria for being "DC" are fairly liberal. Being ONLY positive voltage says nothing about how smooth and ripple-free that DC is. If supplies were spec'd/rated for how smooth they were, or if one could actually see inside, in order to infer smoothness by the components used, that would be great. But sadly, they tend to be sealed black boxes, that cannot be assessed for power quality on the basis of weight, or size, or much printed on the outside. Some WILL be perfectly adequate...you just can't tell which ones until you plug them in. When digital pedals first came on the scene, the idea of daisy chaining several of them was uncommon, so few were designed in a manner to avoid power-line noise. But more than a few people were finding that the dead quiet digital pedal they tried out in the store on a single unshared supply, or battery power, would generate a veritable wasp's nest of buzzing once they brought it home and had it sharing a supply with another digital pedal. The problem goes under the heading of "heterodyning", which one can think of as a sort of high frequency ring modulator. In a ring modulator when you feed in an audio signal, the circuit puts out the sum and difference frequencies of that audio input and the modulating frequency. So if you feed it 400hz, and modulate at 100hz, you get out 500hz and 300hz. Okay, imagine we have two digital pedals with internal clocks operating at 2mhz.....er, *nominally* 2mhz. One of them could be 2.001mhz and the other at 1.999mhz. Both are certainly well within the expected tolerances of the parts used. Those clock pulses "bleed out" through the power lines, and sit as spikes on top of the power. When the power line is *shared* however, one can get the sum and difference of those clock pulses. You obviously won't hear 2.001mhz or 1.999mhz, and you most assuredly won't hear their sum. But their *difference* is only 2khz, and that's something you *will* hear as an annoying constant high-pitched whine. And if a digital pedal has multiple clock frequencies internally, because of divisions of some master clock, the risk for a LOT of audible difference frequencies multiplies. That's what got early digital pedals described as a wasp's/hornet's nest of buzzing. So consumers started complaining about how noisy digital pedals were, and returning them to the store. That was enough to persuade manufacturers to start including design aspects that would prevent clock spikes from leaking out of the pedal. The upshot is that if you have older digital pedals, it is best for them to have their own power supply or at least not share a power line from your pedalboard supply. There is much less cause to worry about more recently manufactured digital pedals, that have protections built in to keep them blessedly buzz-free. Lastly, while many pedalboard supplies are able to provide a variety of supply voltages higher than 9v, and consumers have heard wondrous tales of this or that pedal sounding "better" at 12, 15, or 18V, one should rein in the urge to experiment with running analog pedals at higher voltages until you have assurances that the components in it are up to the task. The chips and transistors are likely fine, but best practices suggest that electrolytic capacitors, for instance, should be rated at 50% greater than the actual supply voltage. So a pedal using 16V capacitors throughout is fine to run at 9V, but should not risk being run at 12V or 15V if you want it to last. Check first. Again, nice job, Colin.

I consistently await your uploads, always great, valuable information. Thank you!

Superb video! Been wondering about this stuff for a while. Learnt a lot.

Best vid on this topic I’ve seen. Putting together boards can be a real pain in the a@$e. This demystifies so many of things that do your head in - wish i had it years ago. Nice one Colin!

PERFECT EXPLANATION! Thanks!!!!!

The way Colin says "current" is musical.

AWESOME video and explanations!!! Thank you

Very thorough and informative, thanks 😊

Just when I needed such a video! Thanks!

Great explanations, beautiful drawings!

This one was really good! Thank you.

Very useful, thanks!

Thanks for this video! I learned enough to go through my guitar-related power elements and removed the 24v center-positive back up cord I had saved from a non-audio appliance.

This is the power supply video I've been needing!!!!!

great info thank you

Great video!

Listen to the man. I fried my first three pedals by liberating random power supplies from the house before we had RU-vid to learn things. In the olden days. Cheers for this vid

Good stuff. Glad to hear some of the myths debunked and lots of good advice. I’ve used a Onespot and daisy chain for years without any power related noise. Onespot recommends digital pedals and especially those with lots of LEDs, eg tuners, to be first in the daisy chain closest to the power source. That piece of advice removed the small amount of noise from the tuner display and the board has been totally silent since.

I don't think I've ever seen a power supply where the creators have put so much effort into it's design, at least in aesthetics. There's a reason most of them are called bricks. Place on top of the gorgeous looks, high amperage supply, switchable voltage options, and additional modularity, I think I know what I'm going with once I find I have enough pedals.

Thanks this will come in handy :)

Very cool. Thank you

I’ve got a zoom multi effects pedal that can be powered from a usb lead. I think that’s the way forward. Great work, as always;)

Great video

Thanks Coin! I'm actually putting together two pedal boards together this year. The mega board is going to have 11ish pedals and I am going to put it on an Extra Large Gator board with Gator power supplies. The other board will come later and it will be on a Medium sized Gator board with 5 pedals. The big boy is running into an early 80s Yamaha amp and will be a Punk/Surf/Rockabilly flavours and the medium board will go through an 80s Roland JC 120 with more of a Shoegaze setup. I do have an older pedal board that has the daisy chain One Spot. Never had an issue with it. That board is mainly Danelctro pedals and two DOD pedals. Its a Punk/Rockabilly setup. Funny thing is those old pedals still sound great and play great!😎👍✨

Awesome information, hit it dead on I can't tell you how many people I've seen kill pedals from running 18 volts into a pedal that's requires 9 volts (but internally doubles 18 volts) so feeding this kind of pedal with pedal with 18 volts ends up doubling to 36 volts which can be quite destructive to the pedal requiring to be sent to someone to fix or if not cost effective outright replaced.

Thank you.

Discord/patreon squad!!

Dang, this was like a landmine of info. Everything just clicked for me. I'm getting into building boards properly. The source is important! Thanks man. And your hair looks great

Ah... I was gonna plug the charger from my old pupe trimmer into my DOD Gonkulator

Incredibly informative thanks for making a boring subject actually interesting

Yeess, more Colin

I've built my own power distribution boxes for my boards. They are powered by a 19.2v laptop power supply. I take that, use liner voltage regulator to step 19 to 15 then 12 then 9 volts. Each LDO has its own filter capacitor. It is silent. It was cheap. It was a royal pain in the backside to wire up and box in a small 125b enclosure even if the circuit was simple.

Thanks!

thank you

When I was first starting out and didn’t have a dedicated pedal supply I would pickup the power supply for wireless house phones. They are like 10 cents at thrift stores and already come 9V center polarity with a noise filter and 2.5x5mm plug. I still pick them up whenever I see them, and toss one in when I sell a pedal. Most new players expect a power supply to be included, since every other electronic does. Only costs me ten cents but I can charge a better price over competitors since they don't include one….

Finally. Thanx

Nice strat

I love my strymon pedal power unit.. works with every pedal i steward.

Another winner Colin! By the way I have a TATA question: how do sustainers work?

Super helpful thanks!!!!! What do you think of this : i am thinking of buying the Cioks 4 + a power bank and use it only when recording. This will probably eliminate all the noise coming from the wall. Maybe daisy chain a couple of analog overdrives.

Damn, I was hoping these would be cheaper than a cs12 or even a friedman power grid 10, but it costs way more... I still love your show! Keep up the great work! Cheers from Douglas' Drowsy and Delusional Dungeon of Doom!

Awesome Video Colin! Can we have a video on that tape machine in the background??

Is there a "budget" version for the non touring folks? Great explanations as always in thanks

I got a pretty sweet little power supply. It's got 2x100mA 2x300mA & 2x500mA I believe. It does the job for my 6 pedals lol.

Wow, I'm just looking for reamping solutions and devices. Some people seem to think you need a passive DI for active PUs and vice versa. I don't think so. Let's check what Collin says about DIs active vs passive or reamping in Tha TATAs... 😳 Nothing yet? 😅 Maybe soon? Love your vids 👍

Colin... What’s the tuner on your Board? Also, if using daisy chains... putting the analogs together on one daisy chain, and the digital on another will help with noise? Thanks bro.. LOVE YOUR CHANNEL!!!

I'm saving this just for the soundbyte on positive ground.

That Laphroaig 10 yo is so smoky people keep asking if I've been burning churches... Only because I have a long hair and live in nordic europe. Very intuitive explanation of what you need to understand about powering electric devices. One of the trickiest concepts in the past years to grasp to me has been the fact that ground is often referenced as 0 V, yet it might not be 0 V at all and two devices might have a completely different opinion of what is ground and 0 V. And that even then when your amp chassis is the ground and the live wire is directed to it after passing through its course, it's safe to touch the chassis.

So this will power my HX Stomp and virtually everything else on my board? Friggin' SOLD hahaha

Thanks, current advice let me get my Future Impact 1 synth nonsense up and running without worrying about it leaking smoke ghost

Power them safely.... and most importantly noiselessly. Nice.

check out vertex effects rig doctor, thats the one stop shop for all thing pedalboards

Can confirm, the difference between cheap as possible and well-designed switch mode supplies is boggling. I've been rocking an active mixer that I slapped together on a breadboard/stripboard for the past year or so, to connect both of my PCs to my one headset, and I'm powering it over USB off an Apple iPhone charger. It's literally the only self-contained 5V supply I have on hand that does not make this thing noisy as heck, even with a couple of what are supposed to be ripple-absorbing decoupling capacitors on the power input.

The Fender engine room is the best

Can you do a video on how amp sims and effect VSTs work? As in how do they shape the tone and distort just like a physical amp?

Thanks for the vid, I just have one little (kind of like TATA) question - if I use an adaptor for each of my pedals and they are all plugged in one multiplug (socket splitter or whatever that´s called), those circuits are isolated, right?

I watched a rig rundown with Eric Johnson and his take on pedals is quite different than most. He only uses vintage pedals with an actual battery. And they can’t be close to each other. Oh no, that’s how you get noise and rebellious pedals as he put it. Who am I to argue with him?

I made the m8stake of ordering the donner. Its junction box if perfect but the wall wart that they sent with it whines over my amp.

The Tre Verb will develop an irritating high pitched whine on all settings other than plate reverb if it doesn't have it's own isolated power supply with the proper voltage. (no chaining) Yeah, I spent quite a bit of time chasing that problem down one day. I know of at least two other people who had the same problem. Of course your results may be different, but it's something to keep in mind when using this pedal.

Hi Colin, Ordered the K+ motherboard recently but after thinking about it, I'm curious as to whether or not the three jacks on each "unit" of 2A are isolated so as to not share power between multiple pedals, i.e. an internal daisy chain, instead of each output being isolated. I can't seem to find an answer for this anywhere, but maybe I'm missing something. I know this is almost a year old video, but hope you see this! Thanks!

What's this magical power brick you speak of? The one which eliminates 50/60 cycle hum? My current set up is single coil>polytune2>opamp big muff>OD808>dynacomp>spark booster>carbon copy. All pedals are low output and (except tuner) analog. Everything is powered by the truetone CS6. Problem is my big muff generates A LOT of noise. And not just this one big muff, it's every big muff i've ever owned! I've eliminated all the variables and I'm pretty sure that the Muff is picking up 60 cycle hum from my single coils and adding gain to that sound. In short, it's not the pedal's fault, it's kind've doing what it was designed to do. I would really love to get rid of the noise that accompanies the great tone. I even bought a sentry noise gate and my plan is to put the entire pedal board in its loop to quiet down my rig when the muff is engaged (yes, my rig is quiet when the pedal is disengaged or when I turn my guitar's volume knob down to zero. Your video has given me hope. Any suggestions would be very appreciated. Thank you.

As of now I own 6 guitars, 5 amplifiers and 3 effects pedals , 4 if the one built into on of my amplifiers

Hey Colin, here’s a power supply TATA for you...do pedals draw power when they are not engaged if the power supply and patch cables are connected? Great video!

Laphroiag 10y my fav

"You can't power an AC pedal from a DC supply" Line 6 DL4 and MM4 disagree. Some bugger stole one of my 9V AC adaptors (can't prove anything so I won't name the band he played guitar for that I last saw live at a gig put on by your good self) but I can make do with a DC supply. The only time it doesn't work is in December, when the adaptor is needed for its original, intended purpose of powering some Christmas decorations.

Just purchased the Voodoo ISO-5, Question: This power supply has one input for 12V 300mA, I have 2 pedals that require that much power can I daisy chain the two pedals into that input?

Don’t cross the streams. Total protonic reversal. I moved from a daisy chain power source to a Voodoo Labs isolated power supply and the difference in the sound of my pedals was night and day. I wasn’t that crazy about a few of my pedals when using the daisy chain but when I plugged them into the Voodoo Labs power supply they were like new pedals. Especially my fuzz pedal. Also everything is much more quiet. Very little hiss or buzzing.

The anasounds psu has 4 isolated sections capable of delivering 2 Amps of current right? Does that mean the whole psu delivers up to 8 Amps? Or is is 2 Amps in total?

hi, i recently brought a joyo jp2 multipower adaptor, while using my RP255 (9V, 1.3 amp) along with other pedals/or single on @ output 8, (for max amp) no audio out put but led is on and not flickering. there is not audio gain coming to the mixer or to the amp. the polarity is right and no issues. any solution? please help

I have powered a looper pedal which required 9v DC with 9v.... AC. I thought, it’s 9v, so it’s good!!

But Colin, what does supply voltage matter if the pedal will only draw the current it needs? I guess given a higher source voltage and a fixed circuit resistance, the current will increase and that means a mismatch in power?

I have a boss rc-2 that works with both polarities :S

My only question is, is it better than the GigRig modular system?

I see there's only 1amp per output versions of the K+, what happened to the 2amps?

Hi Colin.. I have a few questions for your TATA : I'm a beginner and looking for my very first guitar.. I do almost my daily activity with my right hand but every time I listen to music I start to play my "air guitar" with my left hand all the time.. Should I buy a right-handed or left-handed.. What is your opinion? If I buy a lefty, will it hurt my right hand when writing since I'll be using it for the fretboard finger? Is it worth buying a lefty version? I would be glad if you or perhaps anyone in the comment section reply to my question.. Thanx :)

Discord!

What aspect of the wah pedal makes it a bad option to place above the power supply? I am trying to understand what pedals are ok to place above the power supply and what pedals are a big no no

wherenyou put your power under delay or drive

"What if I reverse the polarity of the neutron flow?" - Dr Who