Running pedal's at higher voltages?

[Ancient Astronaught]

What is the benefit vs risk of doing this and what pedals can / should you do this too? I'm going to be upgrading from running a daisy chain off my tu-2 to a voodoo labs pp2+ and was just wondering if it would be worth running some pedals at 12v or keeping them all at 9v, see my sig for the pedals i use....

[snipelfritz]

MEGAFUZZ.

but seriously, it'll probably just blow the pedal components.

[Ancient Astronaught]

That's what i figured but i've seen people post that they run their fuzz's at like 18v and mod pedal's at 12v and other random stuff like that and i was just wondering if any of this actually had a purpose or reason. I think i will stick to what the pedal's were designed for, i like experimenting more with toanz and knobz more than with something that can fry my not so cheap pedals....

[McSpunckle]

It depends. There's a few things that can blow.

The filter caps need to be rated for the voltage you're running. It's not uncommon to use the lowest rating you can since it lets you use a smaller/cheaper cap to do the same thing. But they're often 16V, so that would be fine at 12.

If there are any regulators in the circuit, you'd need to be sure they can handle the higher voltage. I'd imagine most can.

LEDs-- usually not a problem, but if the LED is running at its designed operating point, you'll blow it with a higher voltage. They're usually not running on full, though.

For digital circuits, you don't even want to try. Most analog fuzz circuits will be fine, but if they make distortion through diodes, it probably won't matter all that much.

[Ancient Astronaught]

McSpunckle to the rescue again! Thank you for the true technical info! I have no problems with my tone at 9v so i think i will just stick to running them at 9v. I do think i've seen some pedals advertised that they can be run at higher voltages, none of mine are though. Do you think there would be any real advantages to making 18v fuzz pedals?

[Holy Schnikes]

I've only owned a few pedals that were clearly labeled safe at 9-18V. I've always heard the higher voltage gives the circuit more headroom before distortion or clipping is introduced. Never really hear a difference in modulation but OD/distortion tend to sound pretty different depending on the pedal. Tight vs loose, harsh vs smooth, thick distortion vs a more open, old school sound. Just my observations.

Regardless, I've generally stuck to 9V in most scenarios, sounds better to my ear.

[devnulljp]

You can sometimes get more headroom, other times you'll get a different sound depending on the pedal -- Fulltone OCD sounds better at 12V than 9V, and I've heard of people running it at 18 but I never did.
OTOH, you can kill a pedal if it's not designed for it -- case in point I replaced a DM-2 with a Malekko 616 w/o thinking that the DM2 runs on 12V I just plugged in the PP2+ cable and POOF!
Did the same thing with a Whirlwind Gold Box Dist+ -- plugged in the power supply off my Tonebone which is 15V -- smoke and toasted IC. Doh!

[Ancient Astronaught]

i fried my old big box ehx q-tron that way, accidentally plugged in a 9v wall wart instead of the 18v and poof no more sound but from what i understand that was a really common problem with the 18v ehx boxes.

[Jero]

That's odd, didn't think too LOW of voltage would do harm.

[Ancient Astronaught]

That's odd, didn't think too LOW of voltage would do harm.

Neither did I but we fried 2 pedals that way my q-tron and my friends full size holy grail.

[aen]

Don't do it on Dwarfcraft, unless you feel like paying and waiting for repairs.

[Ancient Astronaught]

Don't do it on Dwarfcraft, unless you feel like paying and waiting for repairs.

Don't worry i won't, I trust a builder of amazing pedal's! I'm trying to avoid this feeling --->

[Scruffie]

That's odd, didn't think too LOW of voltage would do harm.

Neither did I but we fried 2 pedals that way my q-tron and my friends full size holy grail.

Hmm... are you sure the power jacks weren't wired for positive tip like some of the other EHX pedals are?

In schematics for both all that should have gotten hit would be regulators which don't make sense.

[Ancient Astronaught]

That's odd, didn't think too LOW of voltage would do harm.

Neither did I but we fried 2 pedals that way my q-tron and my friends full size holy grail.

Hmm... are you sure the power jacks weren't wired for positive tip like some of the other EHX pedals are?

In schematics for both all that should have gotten hit would be regulators which don't make sense.

I have no idea wat actually happened this was 6 or 7 years ago when I was a lot more naive about pedals than I am now.

[Jero]

That's odd, didn't think too LOW of voltage would do harm.

Neither did I but we fried 2 pedals that way my q-tron and my friends full size holy grail.

Hmm... are you sure the power jacks weren't wired for positive tip like some of the other EHX pedals are?
In schematics for both all that should have gotten hit would be regulators which don't make sense.

I kind of thought this too. From what I was told by someone answering emails for EHX, all the pedals with the small tip barrel are center positive. Small stone is included. I never hear people having problems daisy chaining their sstones though so . I always run mine on a separate supply just to be safe.