Advice on Power Conditioners

[Gary Meixner]

Can anyone offer some adivice on selecting a small, low cost power conditioner to use on stage to power a tube amp and and reverb pedal. I currently use an inexpensive powerstrip with surge protection that works fine but occasionaly I will pick up a some AC hum. I mostly see rack mounted units but I want something I can mount inside the amp cabinet to reduce stage clutter. Furhman, Black Lion and others make conditioners that sell for $40.00 - 80.00 that look like a basic powers strip but have surge protection and AC filtering. Are they worth the small investment or shoud I be looking at something else?

Thank you,

Gary

[Bob Sykes]

Go for power strips that have filtering as well as surge protection. The filtering helps with high frequency noise riding on the powerline. It will not help with AC related hum due to bad ground, ground loops or radiated fields coupling into guitar pickups. The surge protection is for transient "one shot" type noise events. and doesn't add much cost to implement in a plain unprotected power strip.

Whether they are worth the investment depends on the noise you are trying to get rid of. You can spend more. The sky's the limit

[Dave Grafe]

What Bob said. All of it.

Keep all fans and other electrical devices well away from the pickup end of your guitar, make certain all of your cables are clean and the connections solid, plug your amp and all other powered devices (this includes active volume pedals, black boxes, buffers, stomp boxes, pedal board power, etc.) into the same strip or quad box and make certain it is properly grounded. If you are running a line to the sound system it behooves you to take your power from the same source whenever practical. I built a dedicated stage AC distro with NEC code SOW 12/3 cable and a few quad boxes spaced 6' apart along its length that everything on stage plugs into to ensure the best possible grounding scheme. With that in use any noxious noises can quickly be traced to bad cables or poorly located electromagnetic sources.

[Gary Meixner]

Gents,

Thank you for the practical advice. I will definitely buy a small power strip with surge protection and filtering so that my amp and reverb pedal can always be plugged into to the same power source. I have a feeling the times when I have had significant hum it was because I was forced to plug in wherever I could find an available outlet separating the two devices and setting up a potential ground loop.

Dave, I like your suggestion, to build a stage AC distro cable with multiple quad boxes spaced along its length. I hate stage clutter and do many shows using a small PA with QSC powered speakers and monitors which sound great, but I end with cords running all over the place. This will help me keep things more organized on stage and not mess up my Feng shui.

Best,

Gary

[ajm]

I like Dave's idea of building a master distribution cable or two to make sure that everybody is grounded the same.
And to add to that.........

It has been said before, but everybody (or band) should have one of those outlet checkers that checks for phasing, open grounds, etc.
Cheap ($10-$20) at Home Depot, Lowes and everywhere else.

And as long as we're spending money...........

A device to measure AC current is also nice to have.
I recently bought a Kill A Watt meter at Harbor Freight for about $30.