i'm disgusted with rebuilding my board

[dubkitty]

i decided a couple of months ago that the time had come to get a larger board and a isolated power supply. the new board isn't that much bigger--2" in width and in depth--but it allows me to have room between the pedals rather than jamming them right up against each other/the patch cord plug ends. so i ordered a Pedaltrain Novo 24 with the absurdly sturdy hard case--you'd think i was taking it to the moon--velcroed the new board in my customary fashion, and transferred the pedals over one at a time in sequence being careful to duplicate the odd cable runs required for certain boxes to fit. so far, so good. lebensraum! then it got ugly.

i chose the new Fender 12x9V supply because it's one of the few with enough outs to handle my board and because it has a 120V outlet i was going to use for my TC SCF chorus/flanger. it was a huge pain mounting it to the underside of the board. when well-supported by 2 rails it was too tall/too far back and held the lower feet off the floor; when tucked between the two front rows in the recessed area the outlets didn't clear the top of the rail. eventually i had to velcro it to one rail, cut a styrofoam block to support it past the deep part of the rail, tucked it between the rail and the supply, and ziptied the supply to the deck. this took two evenings' worth of fiddling. but at least it was sorted.

or so i thought. when i tried to start wiring up the power, i discovered that the supply's 120V outlet does not accept plugs with one prong slightly taller than the other, as is almost universal practice in the USA. not only would it not accept the stock TC plug, it also won't fit a standard 3-prong-to-2-prong adapter with the tabs on the taller prong clipped off with wire cutters. and the whole rationale for choosing this unit was the damn AC outlet. i'm utterly pissed, so much so that instead of using the feedback form on the Sweetwater site to complain i asked for a email address so i can send a blistering complaint letter CCing Fender. how utterly stupid to manufacture a power supply that isn't compatible with the most widely-used boards in the industry? stupid, stupid, stupid. like Lauren Boebert-level stupid.

so now i have to return the Fender supply, try to pick out a compatible replacement, and do the whole bloody power supply thing over again. happily at least i won't have to reconfigure the pedals other than picking two of them up to cut the zip ties. imagine my frustration as i come up on 3 weeks without a functioning board. guess i'll dick around with the Snazzy FX modules while i wait. maybe i'll try to squeeze the damn power supply on the top of the deck, like that's gonna fit. grrrrrrr.

[friendship]

Dang it that sucks! I'm sorry you had such a frustrating time!

[Gone Fission]

Wow. I get that it’s designed to work with their boards, so the size thing I would probably try to roll with, but the useless accessory outlet is just stupid.

I know some people run a mini power strip or an AC line split under a board to deal with weird power needs like that wall-plug-powered pedal or something that runs on low AC volts. That would be less drastic than doing the DC mod that some people do on the old t.c.’s to be able to run them off of a normal supply.

I’m also tempted to go to a bigger board lately. Right now the MIDI switcher and expression pedals are living off-board, and if the expression pedals get added with the switcher that’s getting big, but even just the switcher would need a bigger board.

[dubkitty]

and to make matters worse, carrying the 28-pound board (i weighed it on the bathroom scale) around the apartment and stretching over the board to reach things has fucked my hips and lower back up so i can barely stand to sit up. i need to get a coffee table so i have a decent work surface and can set boards and stuff on it where i can reach them. take a friendly tip from me and don't get old.

the Sweetwater guy called last night and i arranged a return for the power supply, so i have to box that up and FedEx it out. i really don't feel like plowing through 60 power supply product pages today so i'm gonna let that hang for now. at least the actual board/pedals/cables arrangement has worked, though it still remains to be seen if some patch cable arbitrarily died. i'll be a bit surprised if that doesn't happen.

i think i may get two smaller supplies and either run separate power or gang one off the other. trying to run 12 pedals on a single power supply is kind of absurd. the market really doesn't provide those kinds of options. but naturally 2 smaller supplies cost about 30% more than a single big box.

and naturally i'm now thinking about trying to squeeze in another 1590-sized box in the newly open middle tier. i'm pretty well covered for "normal" fx, so the only additions that would make sense are insane racket generators (i'm leaning towards the Fairfield Unpleasant Surprise) and specialty reverb/delay. lately i like the new Catalinbread Yamaha SPX-900-themed reverb they're aiming straight at me by pitching it as Slowdive in a box. i don't really need any of the traditional flavors of delay because the TC Flashback is adequate, so i'd be thinking of something like the Demedash VHS delay or something else way outside of normal lines.

[oldangelmidnight]

I was in the market for a big ol' power supply and it was a tossup between the Fender and the CS12. I ended up buying the Fender when it was on sale but I thing the CS12 would have been fine, too. There are some weird choices on the CS12: it has two dedicated 18v outputs and an AC but if you can hang with 9 regular 9volts and plug your tuner or whatever into the 18, it might be the best second choice. You can also daisy chain some fuzzes off a single output.

[dubkitty]

i passed on that one because i have no pedals rated at 18V. doing two small supplies seems like it would also be easier to wire the pedals up because i wouldn't have to stretch so far or route cables through places together. as far as the AC outlet goes i guess i'll go back to my longtime solution of running the AC power strip that i also plugged the OneSpots into unless i find something else that will actually work. i'm not going to get into drilling the frame or anything daft like that.

[SPACERITUAL]

You should get a line 6 helix.

[dubkitty]

i prefer the ridiculous variety of devices i've already got. if there was a easy solution that met my needs i'd use it.

[SPACERITUAL]

Dude you remember when Neil young went full robot used a bunch of Roland shit in the 80s then a couple years later was like UUUUUH PEARL JAM LIKES ME I DISAVOW.

[Gone Fission]

I do like the Cioks DC7 and their 4/8 expanders for everything but price. If it’s DC, chances are it’ll work with these. The available current on each tap means I don’t worry about it and all taps will do 9v. (I actually have the v2 Eventide PowerMax, which is a DC7 with three taps fixed at 9v but also works with the expanders; I’ve never found the compromise limiting.) Yes, there are other solutions that will do a lot of things if you line up needs and compatibility. But I didn’t want to have to shop for a power brick (besides an expander) ever again. That seemed worth it to me.

[coupleonapkins]

You should get a line 6 helix.

if there was a easy solution that met my needs i'd use it.

[SPACERITUAL]

Ayoooooo

[SPACERITUAL]

Yo also I have a Cioks dc-7 and I recommend.