Wall wart bogging down

[Willthebold]

I posted a couple days ago about making a power adapter to run 4 or 5 pedals.  I bought a 9 volt, 1300 mA adapter at Radio Shack, added a filter and then spliced in 5- 9 volt clips to hook up to the clips on my effects, but when I run them all, they only get about 7.5 volts.  How can you run them off the same adapter without it getting bogged down?  Thanks for the help.

Will

[mikeb]

Is the adapter regulated or unregulated? Regulated mean it will deliver 9V up to it's rated current, whereas unregulated means it'll likely more than 9V at lower current loads and possibly much less than 9V at at higher current loads. You can check this by measuring the voltage from it with no load, i.e. no pedals attached.

Mike

[Willthebold]

I guess it's unregulated since with all the pedals detached it puts out 9 volts and then more like 7 to 7.5 when they're all powered.  Would it work if I took another adapter just like it and ran them together?

Will

[niftydog]

I guess it's unregulated since with all the pedals detached it puts out 9 volts

that sounds wrong. Unregulated supplys output a voltage much higher than they're specification when they are not loaded.

Several possibilties here;

You've got a dud/cheap/incorrectly-labeled power supply.

One or more of your pedals draw large currents.

Your addition of a filter is affecting the supply or you've done something funny with the battery clips. (what does your filter consist of?)



Do you know how to measure the current draw on each pedal? If so, check how much each individual pedal draws and make sure the total is less than what the power supply can provide.

[Hal]

from radio shack?  

Maybe you accidently bought a cell phone instead of a power supply...?

ok real question - did it work, ie, put out 9+volts before you hooked up the filter, et al?

[Willthebold]

The PS puts out more than 9 volts, and mainly it's my TS-808 that really seems to suck the current.  My filter is just a 1000uf cap to ground.  I'm thinking I might just buy a good regulated power supply instead of trying to rig up something.  Unless of coarse you guys can think of an easy alternative?......  thanks for the help guys.

Will

[smoguzbenjamin]

Check if that cap is OK. If it's leaky it might be dissipating energy that way.

[Hal]

Check if that cap is OK. If it's leaky it might be dissipating energy that way.

exactly what I was getting at....remove the cap and see if it works then.

your ts-808 shouldn't need more than a few ma's of current...use your DMM to check that - something might be wrong there...