Hawker’s Lab: Power Supplies
Many of our customers have asked us which power supply is best for the ADG-1 and other pedals.
To better explain power supply options, here is list of supplies in order of quality from the most ideal to the least ideal.
Dedicated multi-output linear supplies. These are the professional solution providing clean output for many pedals for your pedal board. However these supplies are a larger investment and may not be a great option if you only use a few effects. Be sure the one you select can output at least 250ma or more. Some units are not designed for these higher current outputs. Options are available from Truetone, Strymon, VoodoLabs, Mission Engineering, Trex and many other companies.
Linear Regulated power supplies. These were popular in the 1980s and 1990s and can still be sometimes found today. They are a large “wall wort” type supply with filtered and regulated outputs. Due to current regulatory efficiency requirements of most governments as well as their bulk and size, they are much harder to find these days. However, the clean linear regulation provides very good low noise power. I know of no current vendors that make these for pedals at this time, however, Jameco makes one with the polarity inversed so a handy person can cut the power cord and flip the polarity around to make it work.
Switch-mode or Flyback supplies. This is what most low cost current supplies like the One Spot are. They are very efficient and small in size making them convenient. However they tend to not handle light loads well getting into a noisy or whining mode with low current draw (called discontinuous or Skip Mode crossover point) making them unsuitable for most pedal usage. AMpT has evaluated dozens of these supplies and found very few that we felt were acceptable for use due to the noise and ripple performance. Even the best of them will not equal the linear options listed above. However the better ones will work for most situations. Avoid the very low cost (under $20) options as most of these do not handle low current well. We have found the One Spot and Power All brands to perform acceptably and much better than most others.
Filtered and unregulated supplies. These were popular in the 1970s - 1990s and are still sometimes found and still used in some products. These are linear supplies, however the outputs are only filtered with a diode and capacitor and not regulated. This causes the voltage to fluctuate greatly with load and have a high ripple/noise level. These supplies are unsuitable for use with Asheville Music Tools products and should never be used.
We hope you find this information helpful! A good power supply will ensure your AMpT pedal is operating in peak form.
Thanks,
Hawker
