boss aca to psa adapter plug change

[soupbone]

I bought a old Boss SD-1 that uses a aca adapter.I want to switch the adapter jack plug to a psa.I know this one has 1 diode and 1 resisitor at the top,where as the new one's have those 2 parts jumpered.I don't know if that has anything to do with changing it to a psa plug.I looked at the Boss serial decoder from Analogman's page,and this one is a taiwan made model dated 1991.

[soupbone]

I just read stinkfoot's page,and he said all you have to do is jumper thoses 2 components.I'm just wondering though if it would sound better at 12v like it's supposed to have?

[flintstoned]

They're only designed for 9 volts, they just dump 3 volts to ground. It wouldn't be hard to mod it to take the full 12 volts but you wouldn't be able to use a 9 volt battery to get 12
volts.

[zombiwoof]

If you do the mod that Stinkfoot talks about, it still works the same with a 9 volt battery, the mod only gets rid of the two components that drop the voltage when using the unregulated ACA adapter.

If you read the information on the ACA adapter from Stinkfoot, you will see that your ACA powered pedal will work fine if daisy-chained with other pedals when powered from a 9-volt power supply.  Your options are to do that, or mod the pedal to accept a regulated 9-volt adapter, or just power the pedal with a battery.

As a side-note, I just bought a NIB Boss ACA adapter from Ebay, and decided to check it with a meter to see how many volts it actually puts out.  I found that when plugged in, it puts out 14.2 volts (unloaded, in other words not plugged into a pedal).  I have found that the 9 volt power supplies that come with the BBE pedals also work with my ACA Boss pedals, they put out around 13.7 volts so I assume they are also unregulated power supplies.

There is a lot more discussion of this stuff on the Bossarea forum, if you are interested.  If you don't know, the Bossarea also has information on all Boss pedals.

Bossarea Home Page:
http://www.bossarea.com/

Bossarea Forum:
http://www.bossarea.com/forum/default.asp

Al

[zombiwoof]

I bought a old Boss SD-1 that uses a aca adapter.I want to switch the adapter jack plug to a psa.I know this one has 1 diode and 1 resisitor at the top,where as the new one's have those 2 parts jumpered.I don't know if that has anything to do with changing it to a psa plug.I looked at the Boss serial decoder from Analogman's page,and this one is a taiwan made model dated 1991.

The new pedals don't have "those two components jumpered", they just don't have the two components.  The diode and resistor were there to drop the voltage down to around 9 volts when using the ACA unregulated 9 volt adapter, which actually put out over 14 volts, as I previously mentioned.  When used with a battery, the pedal gets the normal 9.6 volts or whatever a standard 9 volt battery puts out, the battery connection doesn't go through the voltage-reducing diode and resistor.  If you do the Stinkfoot mod, and use a regulated 9 volt adapter like the Boss PSA, it should sound the same as it does using a fresh battery.

Al

[soupbone]

Really?I looked inside one of my newer one's and they were jumpered.(I sent you a pic of a 2009 sd-1 to your email)Thank you for the info though!I was just going to buy a aca adapter off of ebay,but i think I'll run it with my voodoo labs pedal power instead.I forgot they have inputs for aca pedals.I think It'll sound better with the more voltage.What do think Al?

[zombiwoof]

Really?I looked inside one of my newer one's and they were jumpered.(I sent you a pic of a 2009 sd-1 to your email)Thank you for the info though!I was just going to buy a aca adapter off of ebay,but i think I'll run it with my voodoo labs pedal power instead.I forgot they have inputs for aca pedals.I think It'll sound better with the more voltage.What do think Al?

Thanks for the pic, I guess you are right about the jumpers!.  Seems that they never updated the board for the change to the PSA adaptor.
I think running it off the 12 volt setting on your power supply should work fine.  All you have to do to check is listen to it with the battery, then plug in the power supply and see if it sounds any different.

I'm leaving all of my ACA Boss pedals as is myself, and just either running batteries in them or using an ACA adaptor for them.  I don't usually run a bunch of Boss pedals, so that's good enough for me.

Someone on the Boss forum said that he thought a certain Boss pedal sounded different when using the ACA adapter than with the pedal daisy-chained to a 9 volt supply, but if you are giving it 12 volts I think that should be enough.

Al

[soupbone]

Awesome!!Thanks Al!