I plan on getting a new pedalboard power supply (isolated and circuit protection) and wanted to know if you can daisey chain three 100mA rated pedals into a 300mA power supply port?
Also, does dasiy chaining introduce noise?
If so, what pedals to avoid in a daisy chain?
I have 14 pedals to supply. One at 18v and 26mA. One with variable option 9 -18v at 30mA. The others are all 9v ranging from 5mA to 300mA.
Pedal current draws are often rounded up to the nearest hundred mA. So I'd say yes 3x 100 mA pedals is fine.
So far. The only pedal I have that draws close to its stated mA is the Digitech whammy DT.
The thing to watch out for is digital pedal putting noise onto ground. This can become worse as the power supply comes under more load.
An example would be Digitech Freqout on a daisy chain with drive pedals. The FO is a small computing device putting near constant noise to ground which..... can appear in the audio signal of drive pedals if in the same daisy chain. If the power supply is stressed (or the wall wart is starting to fail) the noise gets worse.
My drive pedals are all powered by one Caline style semi isolated 'daisy chain in a box'. The Frequot is powered by a completely different power supply - making for no noise.
Some digital pedals with time based effects can make clock noise / ticking noise which can appear if daisy chained - my Tardis drawer (all digital) - if I switch everything on (RV500, DD-500, RE-2, Dimension C, Mimic, MD-200, Freqout, and a Whammy located on the floor......and set the RV and DD500 to run dual presets..... the RV-500's tap tempo starts appearing as noise on the signal chain.... switch one thing off.... and its gone. The power supply is clearly nearing its load limit - not normally an issue as it sounded awful.
I'm planning on gradually upgrading the power delivery in my rack.
When I was using a pedalboard I always had separated power supply for analog and for digital pedals, and never daisy chained digital ones. It worked pretty well
Daisy chaining can definitely introduce noise. I only have one port on one of my boards that is shared. I put two pedals on it that I never have on at the same time. Having each pedal on it's own port is the biggest advantage to using a power supply with isolated ports. it keeps the noise down.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the overall power supply has a maximum that it can put out for amperage. If you re puling from all of the ports at close to their maximum rating, you could have an issue overall. This doesn't happen very often but could if you are running a bunch of digital, power hog, pedals.
*14* pedals and a Profiler? Yeowza.
Daisy chaining pedals will introduce noise. Sometimes you can hear it, sometimes its so insignificant it's equal to zero. Trial and error is the best way if you don't have enough individual outputs.
If you' wanna get it over with.....may as well bite the bullet and go with something like a Strymon Zuma and the Ojai expansion. Individual outputs for all and additional expansion capabilities if needed. Not cheap by any measure.....but one and done.
