Boutique vs Production Line effects pedals

JoeyBones · 2008-05-15T08:06:04+00:00

I've looked into boutique pedals over the last couple months and bought a ZVEX Box Of Rock, ZVEX Fuzz Factory and a Cuzack Tap-A-Whirl.They are great pedals...

Boutique vs Production Line effects pedals

ralley

Hey Joey,
I'm an IT guy too - no electronics background, I just dabble. Building something to drop 12v down to 9v should be pretty easy, let me look around. That said a decent power supply would be easier and a lot lighter and smaller, plus of course no forgetting to re-charge it. I just use a little Boss wall wart with a diasy chain cable to power a bunch of pedals. Cost about R300 and it's dead quiet. The one-spot seems to get recomended a lot as well and I think is available locally.

Rob.

JoeyBones

Hey Ralley,

I'd appreciate any info you can find. I'd like to at least give it a try.

I tried my buddies no name power supply and it definitely made a difference. There's a clear improvement in tone over the 1spot. The 1spot is good (Rated 1,700ma), but my buddies 2,000ma is definitely better, plus it was about R100 cheaper than the 1Spot. I had a boss power supply but it was the smaller one and it wasn't powerful enough for all my pedals. My delays kept cutting out.

A good thing about my buddies PSu is it uses a power cable like the ones used on Laptop power supplies, so there's less chance of it coming loose from the power socket.

Mr-M

JoeyBones wrote: This is kinda off topic, but I though I'd throw it in since were talking about ways to improve tone. I tested my 1spot power supply (1.7A) against my buddies no name brand Power Supply (2A) and I'm sad to say his power supply gave me better tone. Mine seem to dull my tone a bit.

I have to agree with ralley, although batteries do sound great. But the hassle!
If you use your 1-spot, try disconnecting any time-based effects (like Delay, Chorus, Reverb etc.) and your FF from the daisy chain and running those on their own PSUs or on batteries. It should sound a bit better. Those sorts of effects often don't sound as great as they could with digital switching PSUs like the 1spot.

Or you could try some of these: http://www.thegigrig.com/acatalog/TheGigRig_Virtual_Battery.html
Got some of these a few weeks ago and man have they saved me hassles with the tone of my germanium fuzzes!

Mr-M

JoeyBones wrote: A good thing about my buddies PSu is it uses a power cable like the ones used on Laptop power supplies, so there's less chance of it coming loose from the power socket.

Sounds like a digital switching PSU as well. Where did he get it?

JoeyBones

The virtual Battery thing looks interesting. How much are they ? Won't this get a bit messy?

I'll find out where he bought the PSu. He mentioned some warehouse or something of that sort.

Mr-M

JoeyBones wrote: The virtual Battery thing looks interesting. How much are they ? Won't this get a bit messy?

I'll find out where he bought the PSu. He mentioned some warehouse or something of that sort.

I paid for 2X VBs Incl. Shipping, around R700. Was just over a month ago. Messy? Not really. Velcro them to your pedal board, they're quite small. I'm using a 1-spot myself and this really sorted out the pedals on my board that were sounding bad through the 1-spot because it's basically a miniature toroidal transformer. No noise and better tone.

If you could find out about the PSU I'd be very grateful. I've been waiting for nearly a year to get a spare 1-spot from Andy McGibbon's, so if I could get something else locally I'd be rather happy!

JoeyBones

I looked at the Voltz battery power supply, but it's really expensive. Seems to be very robust though.

I left a message for my buddy. Will let you know where he got the PSu from as soon as I here from him.

ralley

Joey,
To drop 12v down to 9v should be pretty easy - a 7809 voltage regulator and two caps is all you need (all available from Yebo electronics). Check the datasheet for the 78xx series at http://www.fairchildsemi.com/ds/LM/LM7805.pdf Figure 10 at the top of page 23 shows the circuit you need. Might need a heatsink as well though bolting the voltage regulator to a metal case may be enough.

Rob.

JoeyBones

Brilliant!!

Thanks Rob.

JoeyBones

This is cool. I'm reading electronics schematics. What's a uF is a that like an ultra F ?

JoeyBones

I found this schematic online just for interest sake :

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~antoon/circ/ps-lm317.html

ralley

Joey,
Not sure if you were joking on that one. The uF is short for micro Farad. Farad being the measure of capacitance and micro the prefix meaning 10−6 (one millionth).

The scheme you linked too is a bit more complicated as it uses a pot to adjust the output voltage, could be fun to simulate a dying battery though.

Rob.

JoeyBones

Thanks for explanation Rob. I'm sure my brother explained that too me a while back, but I forgot.

About the PSu my buddy uses, he bought it from MANTEC. It is center positive, so you just have swap the cables around to change the polarity. I'm not sure if they do a center negative version.