Pedalboard Noise: Do you REALLY need an expensive power supply? $39 Donner VS. $197 Truetone. NS-2??

[@stormwatcher117]

Thanks for this. I have a hiss issue and was trying to pin down the problem. I already have a noise suppressor pedal coming in the mail, but wasn't sure if my power supply might be a culprit as well. This definitely gave me some help figuring out how to set up my rig.

[@MuckingAboutWithMyHeadrush]

Interesting video, you can improve that Donner by swapping it's 1amp wall wart for a 2 amp one, I did this and it allows higher draw pedals to work and improves the noise situation.

[@feinkevi]

Interesting, I have not tried that.

[@riffsnoleads]

would going up to 3 amps 18 volts be safe as well?

[@MuckingAboutWithMyHeadrush]

@@riffsnoleads No, Amps are taken as needed, Volts must be adhered to. Think of it like plumbing, the amps are the pressure in the pipe, open the tap further, more amps come out, the volts are the size of the pipe, you can't fit a 15mm pipe into a 32mm tap and expect 2x the water.

[@JAMBO-qk7gp]

You also created an ad for those tv jones pickups I never realized they had such an effect on the noise

[@feinkevi]

Mostly that's just it being a humbucker compared to vintage styled single coils, but it's a very good humbucker! I def like it quite a lot.

[@RTGuitar10]

Excelent comparison!!

[@HorizontalHoldRecord]

I had the donner was great until it broke. Then some shorts and a dead pedal later. I upgraded to a used Voodoo labs and it’s been great. Look used. Donner was ok just fragile which is a bad mix for a pedal board

[@pipocafogo-bs5xh]

Great video, dont mind those stupid haters for they are just dimwits who probably dont understand a difference between a single coil and a humbucker

[@gnogtr]

I have both of these PSUs....Let me just say the Donner is a POS. Stay away from it if you're a high gain player. There's so much digital noise from it just coming out of my tuner (Walrus Audio Canvas tuner). It's a 300 mAh pedal and that 500 mAh marked socket can't keep up. If I run my tuner alone it's fine, but the second I add another pedal to the supply (I'm only running 4 pedals altogether currently) the noise comes in and it's so bad it's unusable. I bought the CS12 and it fixed all my issues. You probably won't notice it on a clean amp, I didn't with my Deluxe Reverb, but the second I hooked it up to my REVV Generator 120 on even the green channel it's unusable. The unit can't supply enough power (my effects are the tuner, a Hi Power, Tube screamer and Echoplex delay I put in the loop) to run 4 pedals without noise! I tried to cheap out on the PSU and found out once again, you get what you pay for. I fortunately got reimbursed for the Donner via the company after I blasted them on Amazon. If you filter the 2 and 1 star reviews you'll see everybody echoing my sentiment.

[@feinkevi]

The issue there is your power needy pedals, which makes sense/fits with what I was saying in this video. As shown here the Donner can handle plenty of low draw/analog stuff with minimal issue. It’s not so much a POS as the wrong tool for the job with what you want to do. But yeah the CS12 is miles better for the stuff you’re using, glad it’s working out for you.

[@stuarthelmn3699]

Very systematic and thorough. Very helpful thanks

[@julioyamanaka]

good job man

[@philelrod603]

Just to make sure...I have Wampler and Keeley pedals, a boss loop station and a vocal processor pedal...I also have a loop switcher...They all require 9v DC, center pin negative power supply specs. How many actual outputs does the cs12 have that meet this requirement? Thank you...OR would I be better off using the Truetone 1Spot Daisy Chain?

[@feinkevi]

Cs12 has 9 individual 9v outputs. If you have more pedals than that, you could daisy a few off of one of those outputs as long as those pedals play together nicely not having their own isolated power. Depending on which Wampler or Keeley pedals they might be able to also take 18v, there are another two 18v slots in addition to the 9 9v. Just need to be sure total draw doesn’t exceed 3000ma and you should be fine. All the ins/outs and details are here: truetone.com/cs12/

[@feinkevi]

To your second question, I think your use case would call for the more expensive isolated supply in the CS12, particularly getting into things like the vocal processor and loop station.

[@philelrod603]

@@feinkevi Thank you! So, I can run 9 standard 9V DC pedals individually from the CS12? If I want to add more, I'll have to daisy chain?

[@feinkevi]

@@philelrod603 yep, or get like a voltage converter to take one of the 18v outputs down to 9v if you really didn’t want to daisy anything.

[@bigcladwolfdetecting6017]

I don't understand the purpose of the send and return. How is that different than just putting everything in line?

[@feinkevi]

Great question. My understanding is that it will monitor the plain guitar signal input for triggering the gate but then the gate opens and closes on everything in the loop. Sort of like a side chain monitoring the input signal but affecting everything in the loop. This is good because a noisy pedal could have a noise floor above your gate threshold, but the gate will still appropriately only open and close when the guitar is actually playing. You could potentially need to run much more aggressive gate settings without the loop feature and wouldn’t get as natural a sound.

[@gnogtr]

An effects loop allows you to run the preamp of your amp into a pedal directly as opposed to running a pedal into a preamp. Think of delay...If you run a delay pedal in front of a preamp you'll get super loud repeats that echo your guitar signal. If you put it in the effects loop you get repeats of your preamp single and they're much easier to control. If you're running it in front of a clean amp like a Deluxe reverb, an effects loop isn't necessary because you generally run the amp clean. Now there are players that like to run delay in front, think EVH. That's fine! Experiment! But for me, I run a high gain amp (REVV Generator 120) and my delay just sounds so good in the effects loop. I'm also a recording engineer and the effects loop would mimic putting a delay plugin on a dry recorded amp tone, which is what I generally do when recording and the player doesn't use delay on the amp.

[@GucciPonderosa]

Where did you get colored power supplies? I can only find black. Great video!

[@feinkevi]

They came with the 1spot pro, and yes the colors are super handy!

[@GucciPonderosa]

@@feinkevi guess I’ll just have to get creative

[@MrEagleeye58]

Notes you are using a Switching power supply. Would a pure transformer based PS work better?

[@feinkevi]

These are the only two (other than wall warts like the regular one spot) that I have extensive experience with, so I can’t really say from experience. Truetone claims the switching is superior for its flexibility re: power draw.

[@j.jester7821]

hundreds of dollars for a power supply that is nothing more than a breakout box and hub. not sure why you have so much noise, even with a cheap supply i have no such problem. seems like you have a serious grounding issue tbh.

[@feinkevi]

That’s pretty much what this shows, that isolated power in this instance helps, but only slightly. The noise here isn’t a grounding issue, just noisy single coil pickups with multiple stages of gain added exacerbating the problem.

[@BlackuLaLa]

What kind of electrical problem does he have? What equipment are you using? Guitar/amp/pedals/power supply/etc?

[@feinkevi]

I’ll add for posterity that in addition to single coil hum I’ve also found a lot of this noise is coming from RFI interference in the environment. Tons of wireless devices in the house, dimmer switches in use, probably some from LED bulbs etc. I recently found that copper shielding my jazzmasters tamed up their noise level on high gain settings something like 80%, a very worthwhile project in this case.

[@pipocafogo-bs5xh]

Do you realize he is stacking all gain pedals, right? We are not the smartest are we

[@terryshepherd-yc3yt]

I'm trying to figure out to buy the VDLabs plus 3 high current 12 output, a Truetone 1 stop type, or take a chance and buy the cheapest one on Amazon, the Aklot fully isolated pedal power supply. Any thoughts out there in guitar world?

[@feinkevi]

That's totally going to depend on which pedals you need to be plugging in. If it's mostly analog/simpler/basic boss type of stuff, the one spot or amazon brick are probably going to be totally fine. Digital/higher draw types of pedals are typically a lot more picky and will require the higher end power supplies to avoid trouble.

[@terryshepherd-yc3yt]

I've ordered the Aklot. I'll be using maybe up to 12 Boss type pedals. Probably have to use 2 power supplies. If the Aklot works out I'll let ya know.@@feinkevi

[@Liberty-hw9dh]

donner is not isolated

[@coolvibesradio3267]

do you put power supply under drivers or delay

[@feinkevi]

I just have it directly under the center of my board, which is where a couple of overdrives and a boost are. I have noticed no noise from proximity to the power supply.

[@madelyncrochet5143]

You really need to arrange and have a more organized pedal board

[@feinkevi]

Haha I do! This was just playing around with stuff loose on a desk to make unplugging/rearranging easy.

[@johnd942]

Vague and difficult to follow.

[@j.jester7821]

agreed kind of a pointless video.

[@thierrydel2541]

Just use a 1Spot 9VDC @ 30 $ and you can run up to 12 pedals (9v) without noise ;-)

[@pipocafogo-bs5xh]

Difficult for people with cerebral paralysis, maybe.

[@pipocafogo-bs5xh]

​@@j.jester7821enlighten us then

[@Jacob-ir6zi]

I own both of these units This is a pointless comparison because the Donner isn't true isolated. You basically compared a daisy chain with an actual isolated power supply. I haven't watched the video but even if the results ended with the Donner working you didn't prove that it was better than the True Tone. You would have only proved that the Donner worked for this particular setup but I can tell you it's not going to be better than the True Tone. For anyone who would like some actual advice: use the Donner to power up your analog pedals, low current pedals, and pedals that aren't time based with a clock built in (flanger, delay, tremolo etc.) Use the True Tone one for more heavy duty pedals as well as boards with lots of pedals because it actually is isolated. Donner pretty much lied in their marketing but that being said it's still a pretty good value if you want a daisy chain with lots of output jacks.

[@feinkevi]

Whelp, if you had watched the video you’d see I said basically exactly all of that, so I guess I’m glad we agree? Yes, it depends on what the source of your noise is but with basic analog pedals the difference is measurable but minimal. I get vastly more mileage out of a noise gate because in my use case the noise is coming from single coil guitars and lots of RFI interference in the environment. (I also found that adding copper shielding also made a vast improvement a while after I made this.)

[@feinkevi]

And yes, the point was exactly to compare a daisy chain style cheap PSU to a proper isolated one and measure the difference in noise. Like, that’s the idea, I don’t see why you would say that like some kind of gotcha. Maybe you don’t care and that’s fine, don’t bother watching it’s just noodling around and measuring output for funsies.

[@Jacob-ir6zi]

Because your video title makes it seem like you're comparing two isolated power supplies when one of them isn't actually isolated and you don't state that within the first 3 minutes so I would have no way of knowing you acknowledged this because I'm not going to sit through the entire thing. My comment provides a quick answer so people don't have to sit through your entire video. You just said I said exactly what you said in the video. This video is over 10 minutes long when it doesn't have to be (I do like some of your editing and voice over choices but this video is too long). Also the noise reducer doesn't actually eliminate noise it only kills it when you're not playing so if you use the Donner it still introduces more noise than if you used the cs-12. Also you could be cleaning up your signal more if you utilized the sends and returns on your noise reducer. You did a lot of work but all I'm doing is providing a quick and easy answer for people wandering about this. The other reason is if I post something and someone sees I posted wrong info someone can comment and correct me which gives me more information and educates me on the products I own. People come to the comments before they watch videos all the time but it's helpful to tell people that the Donner is not isolated because many people including myself purchased it thinking it was isolated. I guarantee you this comment probably saved someone from wasting their money on the Donner when it would have not been appropriate for their rig. I wish I had seen a comment like mine back in 2017 when I bought that thing thinking it could do exactly what the True Tone could do.

[@feinkevi]

@@Jacob-ir6zi bruh I super do not care if you don’t want to watch the video, that’s fine, or that you misread the title, ok. But yes, I know how the ns2 works. 🙄 kzbin.info/www/bejne/lX7Iknmsfax2gK8si=jv2wX5wWPGDPp0WK&t=6m30s

[@feinkevi]

@@Jacob-ir6ziI do completely understand the value of a TLDR and understand this could have been covered in one minute instead of 13, to that extent yes thanks for summarizing for posterity. Suppose I could add a warning that this is for excessively nerding over minutia only ha.