If you replace “mV” with “mA” you are mathematically correct. You can add up the current requirements (mA) of all the pedals and that has to be less than the current rating of The power supply. The catch is that many pedals don’t turn off when bypassed, so they are still drawing current unless physically unplugged. Overloading the power supply may over time cause the power supply to fail or it may cause a condition that damages the pedals, depending on how things are designed. It’s best to get a big enough power supply or divide the pedals onto more power supplies. Dividing has the advantage of having a spare power supply On hand if one fails.
Yeah. Even a cheap power supply is better than daisy chaining in this case.
I have a super cheap Donner power supply that advertised itself as isolating (tl;dr, it isn’t, they just put choke coils on each outlet) but still sounds fine on my board. That said, now that my board is more or less done it would be the first obvious upgrade.
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Yeah, I got a cheap, possibly donner, or no name one, and used it a bit, and then came across one line not turning on one of my pedals, then I saw I was still on a 100ma line, and this one needed 500ma. I had one, but it was a shared 9v/12v/18v.
Then I realized there was one other port that was 300ma 9v/12v/15v/18v. And all the others were 100ma. I realized that I thought since most of the cheap supplies were similar, that they were the same, and didn’t think to look to closely, buying not just for lower price, but mostly what would arrive soonest, this was first days of Covid lockdown and even with Amazon Prime, many things were taking a month or more to arrive.
A month later when I was building the board with more pedals, and found this, I quickly returned it and upgraded a little bit.
Went with
and it has pretty good power options. I like it, and I am not really strong with electrical, but it seems to offer much more of what I wanted and needed.
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I think that’s actually the same circuit as one of the Donners. When I was looking I found teardowns and most of the cheap ones were using the same or very similar boards. And lying about being isolated and instead just putting a choke on each power outlet.
Easy to test, take a multimeter, set to resistance, unplug the thing, and see if any of the two grounds of the outputs are connected.
For a decent PS with isolated grounds most of the options start around $80 IIRC.
That said, I have not had ground loop issues with my Donner yet. I guess the chokes sort of work?
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Yeah,I was after the 300ma instead of 100ma.
Most I saw in the $35 and under range had all or most 100ma, with one to 3 at 300ma and the two selectable with higher volt output.
I think this was one of the only ones I found, in stock, with fast ship, for $35. It very well could be a donner copy, or joyo, or koogo. It is Cailine, and those guys not only copy each other, I would bet a lot of them, or their parts come from the same factories. Probably factories making some of the bigger name pedals as well, just like the production line Basses.
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finally my new pb is done! it’s the large sized gator, had the small one but bought too many pedals (oops). so from bottom to top:
- source audio spectrum envelope filter: amazing, the funk machine. makes you bootsy jr in seconds. 6 presets, infinitely customizable from mild to crazy. make my funk the p-funk.
- zoom b1four: you just can’t get away from it. use it more for a rhythm machine than an all in one box, but i do have some sounds in it i use. and i discovered one very important thing for practice that almost nothing i have found has - the aux out plays not just to the headphone jack but also to the line out so you don’t have to wear headphones to practice!
- hotone wally plus looper: just the friggin most adorbz thing on earth. and you can record 11 samples of 30 min each (!!!) with it.
- darkglass vintage overdrive: yes, darkglass. the metal guys. except this isn’t metal. you can really dial in some mellow tube driven sounds with it. and of course, screaming metal sounds if you want. but it skews more umm… vintage. don’t use a lot of od, but love it.
- EHX pog chorus: yes, because i saw it on scotts bass channel. and i haven’t found another chorus that sounds like it. and like scott i (using my zoom) like to use it with a quick slapback type delay, and i throw in a touch of reverb. shimmer galore, really pretty. pog gives you the note you play, the note an octave lower and the note an octave higher all at once for a really big sound.
- TC electronic hall of fame 2 reverb: 11 presets and a ton of downloadable sounds through tc’s toneprint app. (see next).
- TC spectracomp compression: the secret weapon. so i kept hearing about how every bass player needed compression and to never turn it off. and every compression demo i heard was… subtle. like is this doing anything subtle. but i bought this. and was unimpressed. so before sending it back, i tried the toneprint thing. this uses an app that downloads new sounds to your pedal through your cellphone and your bass’s pickups - super clever (I am using the one called the weapon) and my mind was blown, really tight super punchy tone. if you just tap your thumb you instantly get the larry graham KA-TWANG. if you struggle with getting a really funky sound, compression
. and yet still gives a nice smooth fingerpluck, just tight and fat. every bass player needs compression. never turn it off. - Aguilar tone hammer di preamp: it was between this and the tech 21 paradriver, which i also have. i will sell the paradriver, but it was closer than i thought. the para sounds good and makes my ubass piezo pickup sound awesome. the TH also sounds good, you almost cannot make it sound bad but it has a huge flaw. some people say it isn’t a flaw because it’s not what it was designed to do. fair enough, but in the real world it’s what almost everybody expects it to do so i say flaw. it has a gain switch on it, with gain switch on you get overdrive/distortion. gain off, clean/no OD. so you dial in your preamp settings, get to a point in the song that needs a little growl and go to kick in the gain footswitch. you quickly scramble to unclick it, because your bass just got twice as loud. you have to decide if you want to use this preamp with the gain always off, or always on. there is no going back and forth. i have my darkglass for OD so it’s ok with me. but still mind blowing that they wouldn’t have made it unity gain between the two. i suspect a new version will be coming soon.
power is from the cheap but good caline power recommended by Tdub (thanx!). it is dead quiet so far and can power everything from the 18v Aguilar to the 500 mA zoom. i used those little cable organizer things to lock down my cables and keep it neat. the bottom cords that look kind of chaotic are actually tucked under the board lip and do not show when viewed straight on. Switch toppers for Pam. OK WAKE UP, sorry didn’t mean to rattle on. just thought i would share. let me know if this king james bible sized post didn’t answer any questions.
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@T_dub I’ve been looking at the one on Amazon. Does it give the option to reverse polarity on one of the outputs if need be?
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BTW, does everyone know what unity gain means? Cuz I didn’t. If you have any pedal with a volume knob on it (output, master, etc).
Click the pedal on, play a note, click pedal off, play same note, adjust pedal volume so both notes are the same volume. So, duh, now when you kick in your effect, you’re not louder or quieter then before. A free dB meter app on your phone makes it easy, don’t try to get it perfect, close enough is good enough. On a lot of pedals if you change the other settings it will change this, so dial this in last.
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That’s because the POG is an octaver/pitch shifter, not a chorus 
They are awesome too, great choice. I kind of want one but didn’t want to spend quite that much on an octaver.
I also like the Vintage Microtubes a lot, great pedal. Lots of cool tube-screamer like sounds in there, yet still with the Darkglass deep bottom end.
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Yes you are correct. But I also haven’t heard an Octaver that sounds like it either 
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Hah!
Well I think the POG is pretty highly regarded, so excellent choice there. I’ve heard really good things about its tracking.
Hall of Fame 2 is also a great pedal, I almost bought one. Nice board overall! 
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Usually that is done in cables - you get cables that are wired to reverse the polarity.
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As far as I know, it means that the input level and the output level are the same (i.e., no amplification while some kind of sound shaping is done). Active basses often have a unity gain active circuit, such that you can switch from active to passive without a noticeable change in signal level.
Not sure if that helps…
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They have adapter cords (included) that reverse the polarity if needed.
Basically if you need it reversed, you use one of the two cords that are reversed.
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Yeah in my experience most people just use the cables for this.
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Pedalboard for upcoming session…
A few other pedals and devices that rotate through as needed.
Current Board:
TC Electronic PolyTune 3 Tuner
Ampeg Opto Comp Compressor
Ampeg Liquifier Chorus
TC Electronic Hall of Fame Reverb
Ampeg SCRDI
iPad Mini
Other pedals in rotation:
EHX Pitchfork
Zoom MS-60B
IRig Duo (epic little device)
iRig Blue Turn
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Nice, simple, practice set up there. Not like the monster collection I have been building. I actually got a much smaller board on order, to build a smaller one to carry around, and for overflow. Lol
Please explain the epic little device, what is it and what does It do? Is it the DAI like device to go directly from the bass into an Ipad? Or thru your pedal chain and into the Ipad I guess as well?
Why is it epic, how do you use it that makes it so valuable?
I am limited to only an Ipad for anything I do or plan to do for recording and such, so I am interested to know.
Even tho, I went with my neighbor today, computer shopping. He was looking for a 2nd hand laptop to run Abeldon (sp?) on. I had no interested in a crappy little second hand laptop, so I was really only giving him a ride, not planning to find anything.
Then
The place we ended up at had tons and tons and tons of used., certified, refurbished IMac 9.1’s for dirt cheap. My neighbor, who had alway talked down on apple products, and was doing so, even on the car ride shopping for a laptop, left the store with said IMac.
I just paid a ton of bills, and don’t want to stretch myself thin for the next week and a day or two, so I opted not to get one today, but I sure plan to get one very soon.
Then I got home, and he couldn’t download GarageBand because it is one OS lower then the supported version of GB and apple doesn’t have any archives abailable.
I found a possible work around, to load Catalina on the unsupported computer, and that would allow the iMac to down’oad any current apps, GB Included.
If succesful, I still plan to get one, but if I can’t get GB on the dumb thing, I may not.
Although, my other neighbor has lifetime access to abeldon pro or whatever teh top tier version is, and can unlock it on my iMac if I were to choose to still get one, but IDK if I want to dedicate time to learning it. Although, my neighbor / friend is fluent in it, so I could get help learning and using it when needed, so that is optional if GB can’t get loaded on the iMac.
Man were ther a lot of “although’s” in that post. 
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So this is for tdub. I’ve made a few additions to my board:
- Added a tc electronic wiretap, fun little pedal. It’s like the modern version of those 80s hand held memo tape recorders you bought at radio shack. Yes the app sucks but not as horrible as I thought it would be. Basically you stomp on it and it records what you’re playing. I could do pretty much the same thing with my Looper but this is much simpler.
- Swapped out many di/preamps for the tech 21 q-strip. I really hate the idea of stacking eq’s. You mess with the eq controls on your bass, then out to your preamp pedal, mess with those eq controls, through your eq pedal, mess with that, into your amp with more eq settings, then out to the sound guy who re-eq’s everything. What the F.
I set EVERYTHING to flat - my bass, my preamp pedal, my amp (I actually bypass it) and use ONE eq source. In my case, my source audio 10 band eq. So I really don’t need much from a preamp. I don’t need overdrive (I use my darkglass for that), compression, gain boost, eq, none of that. So why even have one? Mostly because it makes my piezo pickup ubass sound great. And it’s got a nice “house tone” to it. - I traded in the pog for the subnup. They sound very similar (the pog sounds a touch more synth-y, which I slightly liked more, strangely) but the subnup is much more versatile. It has toneprint, and the second suboctave is mildly useful, I have a touch added in to fill in the low end. And I have something new on order…
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Nice!
Still holding constant at:
I love my preamps
I feel like my board is basically done, at least for now. I have little or no interest in wah or synthbass, could maybe use a phaser (but the chorus is good for most modulation for me), and could picture switching out the Nether for a digital with faster tracking, even though I like it. But all in all I love every pedal on there.
One of the Darkglass VMT clone kits might be tempting as a side project.
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Nice board, I just found a used behringer preamp for my ubass and practice amp.
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