Freustrating Power supply problems

Started by skyloop, May 06, 2023, 06:27:27 PM

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skyloop

One night a device I used a fried a power supply and screwed up my sound. I replace the thing and everything is just fine. UNTIL one day I use a synth pedal in my chain (can't remember the name) that made a lot of extreme sounds and it happened again! I replace the thing and same as usual it's fine again. So recently thinking it may have been a certain kind of sound I was making the power supply couldn't handle as all my other instruments are fine, I got a Roland SP404-MKII and it was great at first, until it did the same thing! What could possibly be causing this to happen with some devices. My electric guitar, Minilogue XD, contact mic things, and microphone no matter how extreme I get with them don't cause this to happen.

My set up is loop based, I have 5 pedals including a looper (the Boss Rc-1) and a lot of what I do is on the instrument front. The chain is Hall of Fame 2 --> Boss DS1 --> Zoom MS-70cdr --> Proco RAT 2 ---> Boss RC-1.

Cementimental

Not enough info to tell what your problem is. No 'sound' can damage a power supply tho

skyloop

Quote from: Cementimental on May 06, 2023, 09:19:58 PM
Not enough info to tell what your problem is. No 'sound' can damage a power supply tho

Well at least that is refreshing to know, I just thought because of the first time this happened that a certain high buzzing tone was what did it since the first times it happened I was messing around with introducing more intense splittercore like aspects to it. The first thing that did it was a Roland TR8S. It must be some kind of electrical problem then where the device is too much for the power supply with everything else I have going on in the chain and I don't have any wiring/electricity problems where I live. I only use one instrument at a time and switch them on the fly. the first this happened it was with some regular Donner pedal power brick, it wasn't true isolated which I thought might have been the issue. I then got the Caline CP-205 which I thought was fine until it happened again and I replaced it with the same one which was the one that got fried by the SP404 MKII. The problem is never the instrument cables or the pedals themselves, they're always fine. I haven't heard of anyone with the same issues besides digging through amazon reviews and found a small amount of people with sound problems with the power supply that matched my issue. I can't find anything else anywhere on anyone that has ever had this problem. I guess for now I just need to play it safe with my next one and keep it more simple as much as I want to do something a little crazier with a sampler. I can plug my phone into it and play samples just fine but the sound from that is of course pretty washed out compared to something as good as the unfortunate culprit of this pedal power supply disaster.

Commander15

Are you daisy chaining those effects from the same power supply?

skyloop

Quote from: Commander15 on May 07, 2023, 06:04:46 PM
Are you daisy chaining those effects from the same power supply?

If you mean by with the wires attached to it that it comes with than yes, is that a problem? If it is how do I determine how many I can have hooked up to that brick at once? I can't afford another fried brick.

skyloop

Ok so I got the new one and as I suspected the thing got fried. What I specifically meant if you needed more clarification is that I use a single wire per input on the power brick. I'm just going to be playing it safe for now and not adding anything else to my set up which is just fine but I like to be an over the top crazy person and introduce as much customization to my noise as possible to keep things interesting. If I hadn't run into all of these power problems I probably would have even had a decent amount recorded by now but looks like that's not happening for a bit longer.

Commander15

#6
So you keep killing your power supply units one after another? Then i suspect that there is something wrong with those cheap caline / donner / mooer supplies OR in electric currents in your house or other space you are using OR those outputs of power supplies are not properly isolated and thus causing problems with polarity of some pedals / devices used. Are the supplies grounded? Are there ground loops in your set?

Only time when i have killed an power supply was when i daisy chained an older 3,5mm power jack equipped RAT with center negative Boss TU-3. Boss was fried, as was power supply and i recieved an big electric shock. This happened in Finland where the general current is 230V and electrics are done pretty much tip-top everywhere. After that i have only used proper isolated CIOKS / Voodoo Labs power bricks or separate BOSS supplies.

Commander15

So i checked the current draws of SP404 and TR8S. SP404 current draw is 1100mA and TR8S draws 2000mA. If you were trying to power those beasts with i.e. Caline power brick, the juice from single 300mA Caline output would run out in a heartbeat.

I suggest that you should use the power supplies that came with those devices and save the power brick for the effects units. Use the same power strip for synths, samplers, mixers and pedal power to avoid nasty hums and other issues. And always check the current draw of those devices that you use.

skyloop

#8
Quote from: Commander15 on May 09, 2023, 10:12:26 AM
So i checked the current draws of SP404 and TR8S. SP404 current draw is 1100mA and TR8S draws 2000mA. If you were trying to power those beasts with i.e. Caline power brick, the juice from single 300mA Caline output would run out in a heartbeat.

I suggest that you should use the power supplies that came with those devices and save the power brick for the effects units. Use the same power strip for synths, samplers, mixers and pedal power to avoid nasty hums and other issues. And always check the current draw of those devices that you use.

Those beat machines I use the dedicated power supply for, those are not actually getting power from the brick itself because I know that would be bad and I don't even know if that would actually be possible to do (but don't worry I am not going to attempt to find out.  I use the same power strip for everything though.I'm going to do more research into this on my own here and try to work out what's going on. Thanks for the info, knew it was some sort of overload happening but now I could probably brain storm ideas on how to stop this from happening from there. Do you know what the power draw on the Korg Minilgue XD is (can't seem to find it anywhere, not even the specifications page)? Because I was just using that and it never causes these issues. Would definitely help in finally pin pointing the specific issue.

Ok so I did some math here on the power handling of these bricks. My current Caline CP-205 (the one that is working just fine with my synth) has a 2600 mA capacity and the CIOKS DC7 offers 4620 mA. I don't what the specific power draw on each of my pedals is but it's obviously under 300 mA because I believe otherwise the things wouldn't work or would cause the problem I'm currently having to occur regardless. Should I be good if I get that higher capacity power supply? Now I really believe that this is the specific issue and that even plugging in those machines through an instrument cable to the pedal chain without directly connecting the thing to the power brick itself can still cause an overload on the brick.

skyloop

#9
Quote from: Commander15 on May 09, 2023, 09:55:45 AM
So you keep killing your power supply units one after another? Then i suspect that there is something wrong with those cheap caline / donner / mooer supplies OR in electric currents in your house or other space you are using OR those outputs of power supplies are not properly isolated and thus causing problems with polarity of some pedals / devices used. Are the supplies grounded? Are there ground loops in your set?

Only time when i have killed an power supply was when i daisy chained an older 3,5mm power jack equipped RAT with center negative Boss TU-3. Boss was fried, as was power supply and i recieved an big electric shock. This happened in Finland where the general current is 230V and electrics are done pretty much tip-top everywhere. After that i have only used proper isolated CIOKS / Voodoo Labs power bricks or separate BOSS supplies.

I don't know what a ground loop is, so likely not. What is a ground loop and how do I use one? (EDIT - Boy do I feel dumb, no I don't have any ground loop going or at least it's not super noticeable, could only benefit from getting a better power supply anyways) The issue only arises when I plug in those beat machines to the instrument jack on my first pedal in the chain so I know it specifically has to do with adding those to my current chain whatever is going on there and the pedals themselves are always fine. I'm not sure what the general current in my place is (US) but judging by what is going on here specifically I don't think that is the issue. I myself have not received any electric shocks and there isn't any sparking that occurs. Seems to be just enough of a power overload through my current brick to screw it up but not enough to totally wreck it in a dangerous way like that.

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/CIOKSDC7--cioks-dc7-pedal-power-supply Is this one of the power supplies you're talking about there?

UPDATE - I was able to safely use it in the second mixer slot, not quite what I wanted but it's a way. They can kinda blend but I don't think it sound very satisfying (currently anyways, only ran a test with couple microphone feedback distortion layers so far) unless I do a sharp dip down into sound coming from the sampler before diving right back into total chaos. I'll have to play around more with that with everything going and see how that works out

UPDATE 2 - I wasn't too satisfied with how that turned out this morning and it contributes when the signal is beefed up enough to hard clipping which ironically I do not want going on, So then I big brained a bit and found another way, using it without running it through the mixer at all which worked perfectly but even with the volume maxed on it (which also overdrives the sound a bit itself) and if it's not on there is no feedback noise. To work with my Tascam for recording, I'd just need some more 1/4" adapters to get the sound to both channels for each end. BUT one problem, the mixer noise completely dominates the signal and I can't drop the volume on it enough to do anything but sharp drops on purpose like the only way I found to use it when I found that safe way to do so, The SP404MKII just isn't loud enough to mix with it on its own so what I'm going to do next is have a battery powered only Proco RAT2 there to see if that beefs that signal up enough to compete with the mixer signal better which should also get some brutal shark crunchiness going on too.

UPDATE 3 - Yesterday I had only 3 pedals going and was doing a set up with the synth that is always fine and this did the thing again to it (it was synth into multi effects --> Hall of Fame 2 --> Hot Head distortion pedal), I'm actually starting to think this an accumulating issue and I just don't hit that overload point with it as quickly.  So I bit the bullet and ordered that other power supply I linked up there, no one reports any noise problems with it, Like the synth isn't even directly connected to the brick. I'll post the results when I try that one out, should be 4-5 days. I wonder if this will make things even quieter at a baseline, I may be having subtle bad noise problems I don't even know about. Since no one can help me here as it seems no one has ever had an issue like this ever it's up to me to go down this rabbit hole and pull up all the information I can on it. Who knows probably in the future someone else will see this topic and save themselves the money and endless frustration. 500 something views too, guess everyone is lining up to see this power supply saga unfold. I also looked up adding a synth to a guitar pedal chain and have found no warnings on doing this and looking at bad power supply reviews have come across experiences of gradual noise and eventual failure of them too.

UPDATE 4 - So the new power supply came in and it fixed the issue...almost too well to the point where I actually now play differently because the sound is so strong and clean now. Not a single current overload, the lights didn't even blink a little on it and I tried everything. My noise is now more higher and sharper in profile with less ultra low end explosionyness to it. I even had to now use a powered microphone because the old one doesn't cut in that strong and heavy mix at all anymore and I'm now thinking of new ideas because I can't use it in the same exact way I used the other. I never once thought a power supply could change the way your noise sounds even without damage to it but this is proof that it actually does matter.