2025 State of Power : Growing Pains, Analysis and Solutions

So I did a State of Power article back at the start of last year - where I identified that I really needed to update / upgrade a couple of my power supplies - my Friedman Power Grids - which were just a constant 10 x 350mA - all properly isolated, but not really up to some of the recent digital / hybrid pedals - which average out at 9V 500mA, and where the Tube Preamps typically take at least 9V 500, but more typically 12V @ 300mA+. The NUX Zeus supplies were the perfect replacements for the Power Grids - in having the same number of isolated outlets - 10, but at a maximum of 9V 500mA, and with 3 outlets at 9V / 12V / 18V variable, and the end one at fully variable 6V > 9V > 12V. In any case, I identified the change over a year ago, but those Zeus supplies were holding fast at £200 a piece - where I was hoping they would come down in a price a little.

Part-way through last year I started hearing some extra noise in the signal chain - just the slightest degree of hiss / noise - where previously the signal had been pristine. I also picked up a few pedals which had power-up / start-up issues - so the Cosmic Loop FX Parallelarator seems to have quite a large surge at startup - while it operates at just 43mA typically. The same is true of the somewhat higher current draw Crazy Tube Circuits Venus - where I needed to put isolation switches on both of those - so that they’re not taking any power at start-up. If they’re permanently connected, my Cioks supplies go into overage protection - which results in an annoying flashing status. Powering those pedals after start-up has no impact - so you just need to make sure they’re isolated at startup, and then you can switch them in after. I also put the Poly Ample on an Isolation Switch - as it sometimes doesn’t boot up properly and needs to be reset - having a switch is a lot more elegant than unplugging and re-plugging the 9V Cable.

So in the run-up to ’Meltdown Sunda’y a couple of weeks ago or so - my ’Bloody Sunday’ where I wasn’t getting any sound out of the pedal-chain for the whole day pretty much - on account of a faulty bypass switch on one of my new pedals - which bypassed the whole chain weirdly. I had put 11 new pedals on the board at the same time - so the trouble shooting took a little longer than intended and seemed to be intermittent initially.

In any case and in the aftermath of that event - which was mostly resolved the following morning - I did start to become annoyed by the extra noise I was hearing in the signal chain. With my new Butterfly Effects Dobbo Granular Playground added - that seemed to generate more noise too - so I put that behind an isolation switch also - which resolved the problem.

As of writing this - I have switched out 3 of my legacy power supplies. Also in the wake of the Meltdown Sunday incident - I had decided the the pedals I had doubled-up in the early half of the chain (2-way daisy-chains) needed to be fully isolated - as the board had fully been for the longest time. So I swapped out my 5 x Outlet Ojai, for a second 9 x Outlet Zuma - which I got second-hand on Reverb.com for about £200 quid. I finally swapped out the 2 x Friedman Power Grids for the 2 x Nux Zeus ones - which I picked up for £170 each - from a vendor on Ebay. I made some mistakes in the setup, and hadn’t 100% plugged in the Mains Leads for the new Zuma and one of the new Zeus’s - so neither of those worked properly initially until I further tightened those cables.

Transplanting in 3 new supplies is quite the task for the board - but after those were fully and properly established I was back to my crystal clear and pristine through-signal - the board was sounding the best it had in a very long time. While I soon ran into a weird issue where after between 30 and 60 minutes of play I was getting a worrying momentary volume drop - it was resolved by stomping other pedals in the chain on and off - and then the intended pedals worked fine again.