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Hi Folks, hoping someone can help. I have a small board and reliable 9v power supply which, daisy chained, give me no problems. I would like to power my Catalinbread delay at 18v without using a separate power supply.
I notice xotic/disaster area offer a solution however I suspect this won’t work as by doubling voltage you automatically double the power draw (xotic goes to 80ma and DA 100ma) and the catalinbread at 9v is 60.ma.
Anyone any ideas?
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Comments
Finally most delay ICs run at 5v for digital stuff (regulated down from 9v). The analogue MN3007 can run at 15v, and be worthy to do so. But again, if it was, I'd expect it to be doing that internally if the designer thought that was necessary. If it is a digital delay, you'll be asking the reg to dump a load more voltage, which will cause it to run much hotter.
I've also got two Catalinbread delays on my board:
Belle Epoch
Echorec
I A/B'd between 9v and 18v many times.
Conclusion: the Belle Epoch sounds nicer, smoother, at 9v.
The Echorec has nothing in it really, perhaps just a smidgeon at 18v over 9v but nothing I could really hear at home and certainly not on stage. I'm only running it at 18v because I can rather than because I need to.
But the BE at 9v was a surprise. I expected it to sound nicer at 18v for some reason. I suppose because double is more, and more must be "better." Which it wasn't.
The Echorec and Belle Epoch I'm fairly sure run a more modern Spin FV-1 (guessing here, never seen inside one), again fixed at 5v. So other than having fewer inherent issues, again it's unlikely to make much of difference having some of the rest of the circuit running with an 18v swing.
Basically unless you're running an old analogue delay that's specifically running a BBD designed to run at higher voltage, there's really not a lot of point in giving them more. Plus the old delays, more often than not, already gave them their optimal voltage internally.
As you say above, people get this thing in their head that more=better. In a lot of cases this isn't the case as if it were, you'd make it run at that internally. Everything I build runs on a 9V source. If you design an effect that runs better on 18v and don't fit a charge pump to do it, you're just being lazy and cheap.
I agree with Juansolo, be it supply voltage, valve type, bias point etc, the guys that did the original design USUALLY did it right!
Unless you REALLY know what you are about, leave it TF alone!
Dave.
And thanks for the heads up on drawing more current, I didn't know voltage doubling did that.
Thanks for clarifying the current thing btw
More voltage can make a difference with OD/boosts/distortion as it can give you more headroom, which might be what you want. Potentially. But as I say, circuits that work better with more voltage should have a charge pump internally to get that voltage, otherwise the designer was just being cheap.
My last note is just to say, that when it comes to pedal repairs, people over-volting effects* probably runs neck and neck with 3PDT stomp failure with us. There's a great possibility of components in a pedal not being able to take 24v... Again if you're designing an effect with a view to it running internally at that sort of voltage, you use appropriate parts. If you put 24v into an effect that the designer only ever expected to run at 9v, then there is a high possibility of popping it.
FWIW, every Klone we've ever fixed has been someone giving it too much power. They already run internally with a 27v swing inside (in places, it's a schizophrenically designed effect), you put an 18v source into it, you double that to 54v... That said the zener with pop first with that effect, so thankfully it doesn't take out anything else. Well it'll short your PSU, which might not like it.
Basically, whatever an effect says on it's box, give it that.
*which people rarely admit to... We can tell you know, and it makes our life immeasurably easier when it comes to fixing things if you tell us in the first place.
If you double the voltage and keep the current the same then the power doubles.
If you double the voltage and the current then the power quadruples.
If you double the voltage but keep the power the same then the current halves.
I can't see anything on the Catalinbread site that states that the current draw doubles at 18v - it'd be very odd indeed if that was the case.
If I get a moment I'll make a vid. I don't know what the audible effect of having more headroom should sound like but to me it sounded perhaps a bit crisper, more defined. And I preferred the smoother 9v sound.
A hot 'bucker puts out what, 500mV peak-to-peak? To get that up to 8v peak-to-peak seems like more boost than is at all sensible.
That said, you'd have to really push it to get it to clip at 9v