Pedalboard power advice

robdynamite

Hi all,

I've come to a point where i've got more pedals that just a tuner and a drive pedal now and i'm wanting to put a board together.

I need advice on how to power it. I've got a Boss tuner, OCD, noisegate, a MXR carbon copy and i've just bought a '87 MIJ Boss Chorus. 

The issue comes with the chorus, am i right in thinking it'll need a 12v supply and the rest 9v's?
 
I am a complete novice with pedal boards as i typically just have a tuner and OCD with 9v's in them!

Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated. Cheers.

RickLucas

Contrary to what the internet may tell you, you don't need to spend loads. Most pedals require 9V DC, certainly the ones you list do. Something like this will do the job:
BERLS 9V Pedal Power Supply Guiter Effects AC Adapter and DC Tip Negative 5 Way Daisy Chain Cables Charger for Boss, Digitech, Behringer, MXR, Ibanez, Zoom, EBS, Guyatone, BIYANG: Amazon.co.uk: Musical Instruments

stickyfiddle

re the Boss chorus, this is interesting... 

http://stinkfoot.se/archives/726

It may well work just fine on a 9 daisychain.

RickLucas

If your total current draw exceeds what the adapter can deliver, or if you have digital pedals, you might have problems with hum or high-frequency interference, in which case a bigger PSU with isolated outputs will be necessary. 

EricTheWeary

s that Boss a CE3? looks like they need a 9v supply, be surprising if they didn't ( the whole centre negative 9v thing seems to be because that is the standard that Boss adopted). 
All of those will be pretty low draw so almost any power supply would cope, whatever fits on your board and budget. if you are going to expand further down the line you might want to take the decision to buy something better. Complex digital pedals can often add a lot of noise if sharing a daisy chain so you'd need a properly isolated supply ( many supplies are effectively a daisy chain but in a box). The Harley Benton Powerplant Jr is the famous one for being cheap as chips yet isolated. The outputs are 120ma each so you'd need an adapter to double them ( or a different power supply) if using pedals that need a lot of power but it would be enough for many pedals and you could run a daisy chain off one output for any low power pedals if need be . 

HerrMetal

As Stickyfiddle says the Boss ACA pedals only need 12v if they are not daisy-chained. The LED will typically be very dim if the pedal is not correctly powered. The easiest thing to do will be to power it from the DC out on the TU2/TU3 which will provide the required common ground.  There are also very simple mods to convert from ACA spec to PSA spec. I've done them to a couple of my old Boss pedals.  

robdynamite

Thanks very much guys. Having had a look about it seems like a power supply with 9v and 12v is fairly common and pretty affordable.

BDJohnston

This just released, I recommend you look into it, since it has two dedicated 12v supplies, a total of 2500mA, and the two piggy-back 9V supplies (there are four of them) each has 500mA that can be divided in any fashion (one pedal may be 400mA and the other only 10mA). https://www.carlmartin.com/dc-factory

"A new power supply that has thrown away the traditional toroidal transformer and replaced it with all new fully digital switch mode power supplies. This means that all the outputs are completely isolated and separated. And it also means that there is not radiation hum or excess heat. The power supply can deliver a whooping 2500mA across it's 10 outputs and comes with 10 cables (50 cm) and a voltage doubler cable."