Pedalboard Power Supplies Voltage Range

lcipher3

Active member
So I've been messing around with measuring dedicated power supplies for various pedals I have, and with some multi-outlet "pedalboard power supplies" (bricks) and have some question about what "range" of voltage supply would be acceptable. This all assumes current supply is adequate etc.

Now I know that almost all of the PedalPCB and DIY analog pedals probably don't care about voltage over quite a range. No component, op amp, etc is going to care unless you go crazy. But what about (horror!) "digital" pedals? I'm looking at you BOSS who states "USE BOSS PSX-xxx ADAPTER ONLY" ? What is an acceptable range of input "9 Volts"? 9.4? 9.7?

I measured some of the Boss and Digitek branded $$ single outlet adapters and they seem reasonable voltage: a Boss PSA-120S at no load is about 9.4V and on my IR-200 (draws about 280mA) it drops to 9.2V. An old Digitek TRIO power supply is 9.25V no load and 9.17V when running 350mA to the pedal. Similar (better) on the bigger ($$) PSA for something like the CORE GT1000.

I have a few pedalboard power supplies, and/or battery power (Lithium Ion, etc) and I measured a range of Volts vs mA load.
* Model 1 ranged from a voltage of 9.65 at 100mA, 9.53 at 375mA, and 9.25 at 900mA.
* Model 2 from 9.50 at 100mA, 9.41 at 375mA, and 9.13 at 900 mA.

So do I care? Would these be "safe" to use with "digital" type pedals? Or is there some super tight "voltage" requirement?

I can't believe anyone would put out a product that would be that sensitve w/o catching a ton of flak and failures. But what do you think?
 
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