Help/Powering my pedal board...

Elx

In 20 years of guitar playing I've never used pedals. It has always been either a rack effects units, or a floor board or no effects at all. But I hate effects programming with a passion and I have just finished building my first pedal board. I bought a Harley Benton power plant junior with 5 isolated outputs.

The pedals that I have are:

TC Electronic HOF, Flashback and Polytune

DOD YJM308 overdrive

Marshall Jackhammer JH-1

MXR Dynacomp

Vox Wah pedal

Now...the power supply came with a serial cable with 5 jacks to power 5 similar pedals from one DC outlet.

This is what the manual says:

The serial cable is used to power several effects pedals standing next to each other in a clear way. Connect the five outputs of the serial cable to the DC inputs of the effects units. Connect the input jack of the cable to one of the 9V outlets of the power supply. The total current draw of all connected pedals must not exceed 120mA, thus leaving a maximum of 24mA to each pedal when using devices of the same kind.

Now, would it be OK to connect the three TC pedals using the serial cable, and leaving the other 4 DC outputs for the other 4 pedals?

I know I sound like a muppet, but this is one aspect of guitar playing I never bothered myself with

Many thanks in advance!

dindude

The combined total of the TC's will be too much off of one of those outlets. TC say about 90ma per toneprint pedal I think. I would be inclined to power the Marshall, MXR and DOD on the daisy chain as these are all low draw, then feed the TC's and wah their own power.

Elx

dindude said:

The combined total of the TC's will be too much off of one of those outlets. TC say about 90ma per toneprint pedal I think. I would be inclined to power the Marshall, MXR and DOD on the daisy chain as these are all low draw, then feed the TC's and wah their own power.

Great, thank you very much, just what I figured in the meantime! Mind you, the DOD has a funky looking non-standard

 input so it's off the board for now which means I can power them all individually...Minus the tuner, I decided to use batteries for that for now...I've just put it all together so there will be reshuffling in the coming days...

ChrisMusic

I agree with din dude. 

Keeping analogue and digital pedals on separate supplies is always a good idea, if possible.

You may be aware that the TC Polytune also has a DC out, presumably a simple "daisy chain" type pass through, so that gives another option.  I am not sure if the Polytune has the potential to introduce digital noise into the DC output, or whether it is better to keep it on an isolated supply.  That is probably worth bearing in mind, but you can always try it and see if it works well, or not.

It is probably better to keep the digital pedals on isolated pedals PSU outputs anyway IMO, again to reduce the chances of digital noise (cross talk) getting into the signal chain from sharing the power supply.  Knowing this stuff helps with trouble shooting if you do get any problems, but as always, try things out and see  

ThePrettyDamned

What these guys said.

Not sure about the dod overdrive, I don't have any fussy pedals (bar the Qtron which is 24v ac!). But it's just an overdrive, so it'll run for a while on a good battery anyway

Elx

Cheers guys...The initial idea was to run everything off batteries, because it's neat. So I bought 25 Duracell Procell 9V batteries and I though that should cover me for a while, as I don't gig that much. But to my big surprise, at a gig last Friday both the HOF and Flashback died after 45 minutes! I didn't know if this was normal, but I knew there was no way I was going through the hassle again, not to mention the cost...I bought the Harley Benton after searching the forum for power supply suggestions, and for the money it does appear like a great deal...

Elx

ThePrettyDamned said:

What these guys said.

Not sure about the dod overdrive, I don't have any fussy pedals (bar the Qtron which is 24v ac!). But it's just an overdrive, so it'll run for a while on a good battery anyway

The YJM308 is great, instant Yngwie, but I am going to need a Boss NS-2, just like the man himself...:) Mind you, the JH-1 does a great job as well, I played along to Yngwie last night for almost 2 hours, great fun

ThePrettyDamned

You're a better player than me!

Digital modelling pedals suck power like no tomorrow, so I'd keep them isolated - the harley benton is great value, but only offers low power per output. Perfect for small boards with a few drives/analogue stuff and a couple of digital that need to be isolated

Nice and small, too.

Elx

I like shredding, but grabbing a semi-hollow and trying to play some jazz puts things into perspective ;)I guess we all have our strengths and weaknesses, and it only makes sense that I can play decent neo-classical rock as I grew up on that. But I'm trying to slow down and learn new stuff just to keep it interesting. It makes you change your approach completely and I like the challenge.

steamabacus

I've got a TC Flashback and I can tell you from experience that it eats batteries like no other pedal I've owned. You did well to get 45 minutes out of one.
The battery supplied with them lasts so little time that people regularly post on the TC Electronic forum that their unit is faulty after initial playing tests - only to discover that it's perfectly normal for them to die even before you've fully got your head around how they work.

I've got a Harley Benton PP Jr as well - great value power supply.

This is a useful resource for finding out how much juice different pedals draw. Just make sure that no single output on the PP Jr is being asked to provide more than it's maximum 120mA.

If you have a pedal that needs more than 120mA, you can use the yellow y-cable provided with the PP Jr to use two outputs in parallel - that gives you 240mA at 9V.
Although not provided with the PP Jr, it's possible to buy (or make) a 'series' y-cable that would allow you to use 2 outputs in series for 120mA at 18V. Some drive pedals can be operated at 18V (always check, not all can) for greater headroom, lower noise and a more dynamic 'response'. I do this with the Award-Session JD10 on my board.