Boss 9v power supply

StuartMac290

Annoyingly, I have to buy one of these to power a single pedal live. Is there any advantage to buying one of the official Boss ones or am I as well getting one of the five quid cheapies from Amazon?

mynamesnotbob

They all work the same, I would however be cautious of buying a no name Chinese adaptor that has not been tested. I might power your pedal properly, but could burn your house down - so buy from a reasonable supplier. Also the cheaper ones inject noise potentially due to cheap components/wiring.

Ignoring the safety and potential noise injection, 9v centre neg is 9v centre neg - just make sure there are enough amps being pumped out

ICBM

Any properly regulated 9V adaptor with the right plug size and polarity (tip negative, rare outside the guitar world) and a rating of 200mA or more should be fine - although some that aren't designed for pedals can also cause noise.

What pedal is it? If it's not a digital, you might be better just using a battery. I prefer to for a single pedal normally, it's less faff and clutter on stage.

StuartMac290

It's for a Neunaber Iconoclast. I have some shows coming up in Germany and I'm not taking an amp, so I want to try running the FX8 in stereo through it, and get it back in my foldback. No batteries

mynamesnotbob

StuartMac290 said:

It's for a Neunaber Iconoclast. I have some shows coming up in Germany and I'm not taking an amp, so I want to try running the FX8 in stereo through it, and get it back in my foldback. No batteries

Only seems to need 120ma so most will do - for the saving I would get the Boss or 1 spot - the one spot will run your whole analogue board as it has oodles of power on board, always keep one as a backup

How do you find the Iconoclast?

StuartMac290

Haven't tried it yet, I'll give it a bash today. 

JDE

If you PM me your address I'll send you (a decent) one for free. 

ICBM

mynamesnotbob said:

the one spot will run your whole analogue board as it has oodles of power on board, always keep one as a backup

I'm not a fan of these very high capacity single power supplies - if something goes wrong, they have the capability to do a lot of damage to the pedal rather than shutting themselves down as happens with a low-rated supply. I have seen this several times...

If you need high capacity, get a proper power supply unit with multiple isolated outputs.

StuartMac290

Ah, bollocks, I just ordered one! 

ICBM

Just make absolutely certain you don't accidentally connect it to something that takes the wrong polarity or voltage and you *should* be ok. That's the biggest risk - they're quite capable of totally burning away the protection diode and then destroying the rest of the pedal. There is also a small risk with digital pedals with a 5V regulator, if that shorts input to output you can end up cooking all the digital chips.

These are probably fairly rare, admittedly - but it's the current capability of the supply that turns them from a minor repair into a total write-off.

mynamesnotbob

ICBM said:

mynamesnotbob said:

the one spot will run your whole analogue board as it has oodles of power on board, always keep one as a backup

I'm not a fan of these very high capacity single power supplies - if something goes wrong, they have the capability to do a lot of damage to the pedal rather than shutting themselves down as happens with a low-rated supply. I have seen this several times...

If you need high capacity, get a proper power supply unit with multiple isolated outputs.

Yep, but as much fun as it is carrying a Zuma or equiv around as a spare he needs one output, so doesn’t need the expense of an isolated power supply with multiple high outputs for a single pedal.

ICBM

mynamesnotbob said:

Yep, but as much fun as it is carrying a Zuma or equiv around as a spare he needs one output, so doesn’t need the expense of an isolated power supply with multiple high outputs for a single pedal.

Yes, but the point is that then it's safer to get a standard low-current supply and not one capable of delivering at least 1000mA. It's not the single supply that's the problem, it's the current capability.

I've seen a few pedals completely wrecked by One Spot-type power supplies, simply because the supply will happily keep on feeding current into a shorted diode or regulator.