Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Just to remind all of you out there that a good power conditioner, strip, supply, whatever you want to call them, is a must when playing live.

This past weekend, my band played a newly constructed, state of the art recreation hall. Great place, huge stage, plenty of outlets ,,pretty much the perfect place to play in my area.

We set up, get ready to do a sound check, "assuming" that that nothing can go wrong,, I mean, hey,,,its a brand new place right? What could go wrong?

BOOM!

Turns out the line voltage to the stage was something like 170 volts.

This is something I always check wherever we play, but this time I didnt, because I "assumed" that just because it was a new place, everything was gonna come off perfect.

I was lucky, my ampeg B2, and Sabine tuner was plugged into a good power conditioner that unfortunatley took the hit. Burnt the heck out of the power conditioner, but didnt touch my amp or tuner... My drummer, ( who uses Roland V-drums ), wasnt so lucky, it seems to have cooked his monitor amp, our keyboard player took some severe damage also. By the grace of God, our PA wasnt ready to be powered up at the time.

Chalk this one up as a learning experience.

Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.

NEVER ASSUME ANYTHING! ALWAYS TAKE CARE OF BUSINESS!

We all must learn from stupid, overlooked mistakes like this!

We always have a SPARE power conditioner in the rack, plus I use one as a big part of my rig. We had a situation once where we tripped the fuse in the power conditioner, kicked it back on and kept on going, it could have cost us a few power amps (and the rest of the show) had we not had it.
Professionalism is GOOD. Be prepared for things you would never expect to happen, things will break when you don't expect it, tubes blow, strings break, speakers blow. Be ready to react when it happens.

So, is a power conditioner a multi plug power bar with surge protection, or something else?
I guess the many years that I performed gigs were lucky ones as I never had a problem, but if I ever return to the stage I don't want to take that chance anymore.
Info would be very much appreciated.

Topboost: I am sure the electronic wizards will straighten me out, however, my understanding of a power conditioner is that it is a type of voltage regulator. The surge protector, for example, will only shut things down if the draw on the power bar has been exceeded. It will not compensate for electronic equipment running on a voltage that is too low.

With a lot of amplifiers, lights and a sound system plugged into an inadequate electrical system the end result my be a "brownout" or perhaps a spike on the line that can cause damage to the equipment or line.

The power conditioner maintains a steady voltage of 120 for example when the transient voltage my range from perhaps 95 to 130.

I suspect Philco will let me know whether this interpretation is acceptible or not. Canard?

Yup, that's right Peter. I do a lot of 'rack elevation' drawings here at work and the first thing that goes in, at the bottom of every rack is a line conditioner, then a heavy duty ups and several surge protection devices, though generally not mounted in the rack.
The line conditioner just maintains a steady level of power - either subtracting or adding, to make up for the usual fluxuations of the dirty and raw AC power coming in.
In general - line conditioners have surge protection built into them as well.
It's a great thing to have in your rig.
Our line conditioner of choice is the 'Furman'.

What is your feelings on balanced power devices that split the line into a balanced +/-60 volts to eliminate hum and noise from the AC line?

'Furman' is my power conditioner of choice, also, and mine has a tuner and rack light built into it! Very good use of one rack space!

I have a Furnam unit in my bass rack also. I forget which model(there are many) but it has rack lights, LED voltage indicators and a 15 amp circuit breaker on the front panel. It listed at around $200.00. In this price range the DO NOT maintain a steady 120 volts. They do everything else but you have to spend about 4-5 times as much to get a Furman unit that does that.