GigRig Power

GavRichList

I was curious as to who if any of you power your boards with GigRig power supplies? - I started to look into what it'd cost to do my board with their stuff... holy shit, I gave up counting above £700.... seems utterly ludicrous pricing.

peteri

I did, when I had a large and a small pedal board - basically both boards were permanently wired and I'd just drop in the Generator.

One board had a G2, so you're kind of on that route anyway, but the other didn't that was straight pedals.

Undoubtedly it's a very good, very versatile system. My pedals did sound very good, and it was fun to put together

They also make it easy to lay out a nice simple board in many ways, since you start (say) with a distributor and a couple of isolators and you're powering a fair few pedals, and can position the isolators very close to the pedals.

But I agree, it gets very expensive once you start adding a few other adapters. That said, I definitely would use them again, buying components second hand helps too.

That's actually one of the things I was glad to leave behind, Gigrig stuff is good - but I always felt the solution involved buying something extra from them, rather than it working out of the box.

Price of flexibility I guess

GavRichList

I agree that the tidiness appeals.... but not to the tune that it'd demand. the low mA output of their Isolators make it prohibitory for me - I think I needed nearly 10 of the bespoke adapters.

Gadget

I priced mine up and came to some similarly silly price - and that was without any way of powering my AC pedals!

I've now gone Strymon Zuma and kept my Pedal Power AC for when I need it.

Beexter

When I was on a Metro 24, I had a generator, distributor, 2 isolators and a Time Lord. Bought everything used and probably cost in the region of  £220 ish all in. Yes it was quiet and relatively lightweight but I'm getting similar results with a Cioks DC5 mounted under a Metro 20. I use a gigrig isolator to split one of the Cioks outputs. It's heavier but about £100 cheaper .
The Gigrig stuff is good but starts getting pricey if you need the more specialised adapters.

pmg

I do.  I moved from a PP2 & PP Digital powering my board when I bought a G2.  I sold the voodoolabs and I bought everything 2nd hand.  I pretty much broke even in terms of cost as I was quite lucky

stickyfiddle

I looked at it but went Zuma when I re-pedalled myself. 

For me the attraction of the Gigrig stuff is part neatness and part flexibility if you want to change stuff. If you have a big board and need more juice you potentially only need to buy an adapter or another isolator, rather than a whole new "big" PSU like a PP2+. That said, the Zuma kinda offers that with the Ojai. 

Kebabkid

GavRichList said:

I was curious as to who if any of you power your boards with GigRig power supplies? - I started to look into what it'd cost to do my board with their stuff... holy shit, I gave up counting above £700.... seems utterly ludicrous pricing.

We spoke about this last year when I put up a thread about their bespoke service. I believe it was something like £35 p/hr (including a face to face consultation) and would take close to 10hrs for a small G2 board.

It's a neat, tidy and flexible solution, and some might be able to do it all themselves, but it's a luxury if you're not a touring or busy musician.

I love the Gigrig Generator and have kept it for a small Bass Board but in the end, I just ended up buying a Cioks DC10 and was done with it.

meltedbuzzbox

I was told I would need a timelord (60 squid) and a reverse polarity cable (9 squid) per moogerfooger. That's when I had 5 on the board. I think I needed the same for the empress superdelay too. that was 414 quid to power half my old board (excluding the generator, cables etc.

I don't doubt that it's a great system but it's proper pricey. 

The cioks powerfactor 2 did the whole job for £200 and was rock solid

Wazmeister

Gav,

I used to have Gigrig but changed to Zuma. The 18v switch is simple genius, and I did find Gigrig a wee bit temperamental at times. The Strymon stuff does the lot.

GavRichList

The appeal of having less wires etc is utterly outweighed by the cost. 

NotNowJohn

I have a Generator, SupaNova, Isolator and Distributor to power 8 x 9v and 1 x 12v pedals. As I use a small, flat pedalboard, the GigRig stuff is good as it doesn't take up much space and the power cables can be cut to the ideal length. But I do find the little plastic tabs are a bit crappy. And £60 for a SupaNova ain't cheap. Actually it's mental.
If I was using a board with space underneath for a power supply I would go with Voodoo Lab, Cioks or Strymon and they are all less expensive.

meltedbuzzbox

@impmann what did your board costs to power fella?

VJIves

I had a look too and ended up settling on two Friedman Power Grids. All isolated, 350ma per output, an 18v connector and you can use them as pedal risers!

GavRichList

VJIves said:

I had a look too and ended up settling on two Friedman Power Grids. All isolated, 350ma per output, an 18v connector and you can use them as pedal risers!

Like the look of their boards too. Sadly not quite the right size, otherwise I’d fancy one

Teetonetal

GavRichList said:

The appeal of having less wires etc is utterly outweighed by the cost. 

My impression of the gig rig stuff is that you endup with even more clunk under the board as everything is an adapter of some sort plugging into 1 big PSU?

GavRichList

Think the generator is pretty small... but I’m genuinely amazed at how uncompetitive the pricing is. Even compared to the Strymons, they’re expensive, and it’s hard to fathom why anyone would buy given the quality elsewhere available for a fraction of the cost. 

meltedbuzzbox

5000ma and infinitely scaleable? Well kind of.
I know it weighs a lot less as a PSU. 

He manages to sell them so I guess the price is right

mattismetal

This may not be a well known brand but seems to be a winner

http://thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/124241/vitoos-iso4-plus-new-psu-option#latest

8 x 500ma 9v outputs all runs off one 12v power supply.
i don’t know how they’ve done it but each output is isolated.

Voodoo labs special cables (18 volt, current doubters etc) all work.
you can get two for the price of one timelord. 
I have a gig rig isolator plugged into one of the outputs for my low current drives giving me 11 outputs

impmann

Yes the gig rig is more expensive but it weighs nothing compared to all the other supplies out there - this may not matter to you but if you have a big board like mine, it makes a massive difference to how portable/manageable it is.

As for the comments about having loads of stuff under the board - yes I can see the concern but genuinely it’s not an issue.

The best but for me is the scaleable nature of it. I’ve got 11 pedals powered - three with ‘difficult’ needs and all fully isolated for a lack of noise pickup. If I decide to change things I’m confident that I can power anything. 

I researched power supplies in depth depth and for me, the gig rig solution was the best option (for me).

Danny1969

I'm designing one myself at the moment and have been looking at what's available. I think some manufactures are using the term "isolated" to mean more than one thing. Basically the only way you can have fully isolated outputs is for each output to have it's own transformer secondary winding and own regulator .... that way there's no common ground connection and no issues with ground plane noise or loops in theory. Some power blocks however are clearly common DC in and then each output on it's own regulator ....that is isolation against voltage drop from pedal to pedal but the grounds in this case will be common and thus subject to ground borne noise and loops

To be honest I think a lot of the fault lies with the pedal manufactures ... if they decoupled the supply rails better and had better filters half the problems would go away.