It was the heady days of 2003...

Boy bands contained mostly men in their 30’s and 40’s. Coincidentally, Billboard charts contained no boy bands. We still had no idea that John Mayerowned an electric guitar, much less played one. Michelle Branch was still ending every phrase with “uhh” because it just felt right. The iTunes Music Store was brand new, but the first iPhone was only a tiny glint in Steve Jobs’ eye. And yes, take that, rewind it back. Lil' Jon had the beat that made your booty go <clap>—which is astounding when you think about it. With just a beat?… (To be fair, apparently Ursher and Ludacris achieved similar results, so maybe it's not as complicated as it appears to be.)

Yep, in the middle of all that, Creation Audio Labs was born. It was fifteen years ago on the 4th of July. Tom Cruise, eat your heart out.

As the new guy around here, I just wanted to take this opportunity to wish ol’ Uncle CAL a happy fifteenth birthday!

And while we’re here, I’ve got to let you in on a little secret. Since I joined the team last year, I’ve noticed some real problems around here, especially when it comes to modesty. No, don’t worry. Skip isn’t flouncing around the shop in mesh tank-tops and Daisy-Dukes. It’s a different kind of modesty problem.

You see, when a product or idea is so revolutionary that it deserves to be shouted from the mountaintops, what do we typically do here at CAL? We forget to mention it, of course.

So here are a few things we forgot to mention over the years:

1. CAL is a Pro Audio company, not a pedal company that dabbles in recording gear. CAL is a pro audio company that enjoys building guitar and bass gear with the same level of engineering that SSL, Neve and API applied to their classic consoles. We use that same level of precision along with cutting edge tools when we design pro audio gear and console mods. We trace our pedigree through Westlake Audio, Soundcraft, BSS, Harman, and studios & stages all across North America. We think about audio tools like pro audio circuit engineers do… because we is them… er, we are they… ugh, nevermind.

2. The world’s first truly Pro Audio Grade analog guitar pedals were designed and built by CAL.Why? ‘Cause that’s how we roll. How? Trade secret. Ha! But seriously, it’s a trade secret. We created the category but then, of course, forgot to mention it. Picard-level facepalm, right?

- The world’s first pedals to operate cheerfully at line-level and above?That’s us.

- The first to maintain 100%* fidelity from 20Hz to 20kHz from -60dBu to +6dBu?Us again. (*Ok, 99.999953%—I rounded up. Sue me.)

- The first guitar pedal to boast a noise floor of -115dB?Still us.

Others have joined the pro-fidelity category since then, but we haven’t been able to find anyone who was using pro audio standards in the pedal world before CAL did. And it’s still hard to find anyone else who meets our standards today.

4. We still need your help. We’re nerds, not Madison Avenue marketing types. If a CAL product works for you, tell your friends. Maybe even tell us. We love to hear those stories. If something doesn’t work the way you want it to, please tell us. We know we can’t please everyone, but we also can’t help if we don’t know you have a need.

5. We appreciate your loyalty. All bravado aside, we’re really just here to help. And we want to thank you for letting us serve you over the past 15 years. We wouldn’t be here without you. Thank you.

All the best, Ben Reynolds Marketing Director/Designated JFET Advocate

Creationaudiolabs.com

P.S. Happy Independence Day!

Ben Reynolds is a producer, writer, performer, circuit geek, guitarist, singer, pianist, audio nerd, recording engineer, songwriter, lecturer, and live audio system consultant. More importantly he's a hubby and a daddy. Ben studied Theology at Briercrest College in Canada, then quit after 3 years to study human nature as the frontman for a successful independent Canadian power trio. He's won some national awards. He's written some successful songs. But none of it matters in comparison to his family.

Creation Audio Labs was founded in Nashville, TN in 2003 by former Harman-Soundcraft employees. Harman's offices and service department were situated in Nashville at the time, but when the company decided to pull up roots and move to California, our crew decided to stick around and fill the niche of Soundcraft service techs in the area. Our own Vice President of Research and Development and Co-Owner, Alex “Skip” Welti, was the former national service manager for Soundcraft, and oversaw service and quality control for most of their pro level gear that circulated in North America. Our President, Gary "Sarge" Gistinger, worked directly with him. That being said: we know Soundcraft consoles... like the back of our hand. And while the number of individual hairs

on our knuckles or the length and circumference of our pinky may be useless information (unless we need to pick our nose), our vast depth of knowledge on Soundcraft mixers has proven to be quite the heirloom. For 15 years now, we’ve fielded enough calls, emails, and impromptu interrogations about Soundcraft gear to sink a battleship… or float it, depending upon whether we’re full of hot air or not… I personally think we’re pretty cool ;).

So the question that keeps coming back to us, time and time again is: which console is the best? And maybe we’re too stubborn to change or ways, but the desk that’s maintained the lead consistently in our sight over the years is the

The Ghost was originally released on the market in 93’ to supply a demand for a large-format mixing consoles that fit within a smaller footprint and had a price-point to match. For a little under $10K, you could take home a brand-spanking-new Ghost 32 channel mixing console, complete with LED meter-bridge and power supply, and still have enough to buy groceries at the end of the day. On the slightly-more-than shoestring budgets some engineers and production studios were on, this made the Ghost a no-brainer, not to mention the Ghost’s features are pretty astounding. The Ghost features an inline design with reversible channel and monitor pathways, a very transparent, transformerless mic preamp, four-band EQ (HI & LO boost/cut, LO-MID & HI-MID are fully parametric), 8 auxes (two of which are stereo - Aux 7 & 8), 8 groups, 4 FX returns, 2 Studio Foldbacks and Talk-back mic, two sets of switchable control room monitor outputs, etc apart from separate Mix A and Mix B summing pathways (you essentially had 64 individual signal pathways in one board). The Ghost was made with enough “bells-and-whistles” to necessitate a workflow for music production, audio post-production for TV & Film, and anything in between, all the while putting a state-fair or swanky carnival to shame. You could also purchase the 24-channel variety if you were tighter on space. The Ghost LE (which is essentially the lower-end model) was made available a year or so after initial production, and came without the computer options.

Now a little more about the this board’s “goodies.” The mic preamp on the Ghost was masterminded by an engineer whom Harman “scalped” from Neve to bring their studio game up a notch. It’s a very sharp design that some might even compare to an API in terms of sonic quality, although being transformerless. The EQ circuit was pretty much a carbon-copy of the Soundcraft 3200 and Europa consoles, flag-ship models for their day. The master section featured slew of computer-based machine control and mute automation controls derived from Soundcraft’s own flying-fader classic, the DC2020. So you essentially had all the best parts of a bunch $60k-$100K consoles copy-and-pasted into a board sold for a mere fraction of the cost - tons of bang for your buck. Soundcraft was able to successfully “mill” about 22,000 or so of these puppies between 93’ and 03’, which means there’s ample supply of them out there.

You can typically find them in the $1500 range on the used market, and as low as $500 depending upon where you look.Ghost production underwent six basic waves (issues 1-6), all of which are virtually identical except for a few minor changes like parts swaps, service updates, and the addition of corrosion-resistant, gold-plated jacks on the inserts (the non-gold ones tended to get grody over time and cause signal “roll-off” or drop-out). There were no changes to the frame or layout of the Ghost, and the PCB modules from one version to the next were virtually interchangeable. The only difference, apart from the goldie-jacks, was the regally colored “gold” (or mustard) knobs they had on the first couple of issues... which apparently didn’t “cut the mustard” as far as cosmetics went. You could tell which Ghost you had either by taking the bottom panel off and checking the issue ID on the silk-screen printed on the edge of input channel PCBs, or you could use a flash-light to check the insert jacks and see if they were gold. If inserts are gold, you you’re either sitting on an issue 5 or 6.

And while the Ghost does feature a modular design, whereby individual input channels are situated on their own removable cards, the board is not a “top-loader,” in that you can not remove the modules from the top of the frame. This would’ve made for easier serviceability, but the Ghost is built like a brick ****-house anyway so you don’t have to service them very often. Luckily though, if you did, getting the bottom panel off the Ghost and dropping out one module at a time (without throwing off your session) requires very little leg-work, and can usually be done with only one additional set of hands. Once you’ve got modules out, the Ghost PCBs are populated with all thru-hole components and can be very easily repaired or upgraded. The input modules and rear connector cards are all single-sided PCBs and easy to solder/de-solder on with the master section and group modules being double-sided. The pots, switches, connectors, jacks, and other components are all readily available (at least from our experience). And if all else fails, you can always buy a cheap “parts-console” to harvest souls from… I mean parts.

A lot of the mods out there that you’ll see offered for the Ghost, or any other console for that matter, are based around opamp and capacitor upgrades. For us, we like to add new, high-performance op-amps and electrolytic capacitors on ALL analog signal pathways (from the mic preamps to the mix outputs - everything gets upgraded). We also install IC sockets for easy, solder-free replacement of op-amps in the future.

Regarding opamps, all chips are not created equal. That being said, certain chips function better in the mic preamp as opposed to working well as a pan-buffer. In like manner, certain chips are better as line-drivers (like before an insert/tape send) than they are as an line input or tape return buffer. We did our homework on these chips, studying a veritable library’s worth of info on specifications for these and other chips, as well as running our own tireless diagnostic tests using Audio Precision test equipment and our ears to determine which chips got the best results. Our favorite cock-tail of opamps, thus far, includes the Burr Brown OPA2134, Texas Instruments LME49720 & LM833, as well as the Analog Devices OP275. Additionally, decoupling caps are added to several major ICs across the board to reduce the instance of channels getting crosstalk through the power supply. Compensation caps are applied to some of the faster opamps to filter out unwanted high-frequency oscillations that eat up headroom.

As far as capacitors, all of the electrolytics in the signal pathway get swapped for Nichicon PM series, which have a very low Equivalent-Series-Resistance, have a lower self-noise, and provide for better tone (especially in the Lows and Low-Midrange), along with a much tighter phase response. In the instance of the Groups and Master CRM module, we actually remove and "Jumper" a few of the coupling caps, which tightens up the phase response and lowers the noise a bit more.

New, corrosion-resistant Neutrik gold-plated jacks are installed on all inserts & the headphone jack (unless you’ve got them already). Lastly, all modules additionally receive some extra “love” in the form of full refurbishments to restore them to “like-new” condition and strengthen all mechanical components connections to the PCB. We clean, lubricate, and thoroughly exercise all mechanical components (pots, switches, faders, ¼” TRS jacks, XLRs, etc.) as well as flow fresh solder to all these and the connectors, LEDs, etc.

We believe our mods offer the most bang for your buck. You could go way over-board and put in much more expensive components like discrete opamps, glass capacitors, and the like, but the sonic results are honestly only going to be about 0.0001% or so better... so rather than "splitting atoms," our proprietary modifications are designed to get you 99.999....% of the way for a price that’s probably several times cheaper than going the “full megillah.” We're happy to put in the $25 opamps and glass caps if you insist, but our slew of mods already introduces major improvements to the analog signal pathways by increasing headroom, lowering noise-floor, improving THD+Noise specs, improving low and low-midrange response, widening stereo field, improving analog summing, as well as improving phase response for faster/tighter transients. You’ll find your super-hot-rodded Ghost having a newly found “holier-than-thou” attitude. You’ll get more punch, clarity, and definition in your mixes with much less, unwanted coloration.

In addition to all of these marvelous upgrades, we also offer a few lesser known mods on our “a la carte” menu. You can have input or output transformers of your preferred make installed on channels or on the output pathways to add color to your signals. You can have fader unity switches installed that take the guess-work out of zeroing out your mix levels. You can replace the faders with higher quality ones like Penny+Giles (P+G) faders that have a glassier glide to them. You can replace the Master CRM volume pot with a higher quality one. We can modify Aux 8 to be on the Mix A pathway as opposed to the Mix B. We can modify the EQs to have a slightly different scope either by adjusting the Q or the Frequency Sweep, etc… I could go on but you get the idea. Virtually anything is possible in the world of mods; it’s just not always practical. But if you’ve got the resources and an imagination, we can figure out just about anything shy of landing this Ghost on the moon (Mars is not out of the question though).

Call us at (615) 884-7520 or emails us at info@creationaudiolabs.com to learn more about the Ghost and mods we offer today.

Guitarist/performer, songwriter, live sound engineer, audio post production specialist, repair technician, husband, father - these are just a few of the hats resident tech Michael Frazier wears. Michael graduated with a BA in Audio Production in 2011 from the Art Institute of Tennessee - Nashville, and has been working with Creation Audio Labs in their console maintenance/modification department since then, apart from his work at Gibson guitars from 2012-2015

Lifetime and Product Warranties

We stand behind our products. Creation Audio Labs, Inc. (“CAL") guarantees our products to be free of manufacturing defects or faulty workmanship for the entire lifetime of the product.

Lifetime is defined as seven years after CAL discontinues manufacturing the product, but the lifetime warranty period shall be at least ten years from date of manufacture. Warranty is established by the product serial number’s date of manufacture and is therefore transferrable from owner to owner and proof of purchase is not necessary.

The lifetime warranty covers failures due to manufacturing defects or faulty workmanship that occur during normal intended use. Failures other than manufacturing defects or faulty workmanship that occur during normal intended use are covered by the two-year product warranty.

Exceptions:

The lifetime warranty does not cover normal wear and tear of mechanical components such as switches, potentiometers and connectors beyond two years. The warranties do not cover packaging, manuals, fuses, disposable batteries, damage from neglect, abuse, misuse, contamination, modification, alteration, accident, abnormal conditions of operation or mishandling, including failures caused by use outside of the product's specifications, power supply surges, line power surges, power spikes or acts of God. The warranties do not cover finish color changes due to exposure to environment, smoke, fumes, leaks or abuse. The warranties do not cover damage occurring in shipment of the product or failures which are caused by other connected products, faulty installation, improper adjustment, or service performed by anyone other than CAL. Products must be returned to CAL for any warranty service.

Limits and Exclusions:

There are no expressed warranties except as listed above. CAL shall not be liable for special, incidental, subsequent, consequential, or punitive damages, including but not limited to: damage to any other equipment, damage to recordings, broadcasts, or live events, downtime costs, loss of goodwill, or claims of any party dealing with the purchaser for such damages resulting from the use of our product. All warranties, expressed and implied, including warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are limited to the applicable warranty periods as set forth above.

If there is a defect:

If a product fails, please contact CAL to determine if the problem can be resolved easily with our help, or to determine if it is necessary to send the product in for service.

http://www.CreationAudioLabs.com/contact

Shipping charges to CAL from the owner will be the responsibility of the owner of the product. Return shipping from CAL to the owner within the United States via the most economical means will be paid by CAL. Any international, expedited or special handling shipping charges will be the responsibility of the owner, minus the charges that would be incurred by economy shipping rates for the return of the product.

Defective units will be repaired or replaced at the discretion of, and subject to inspection and approval by Creation Audio Labs, Inc

OR... what makes this pedalboard power supply sound so good?

My last article "Batteries, Wall Warts and the Future of Pedal Power Supplies" gets pretty deep into the technical nitty-gritty of pedal power.This time I want to focus on a more thorough product review of the Also, I want to discuss what makes this power supply sound so good, as well as what features make the PT1250 stand out from the crowd.

The powertrain1250 has eight DC power outlets divided into five separately isolated zones. If you have more than 8 pedals you can daisy-chain several pedals on each outlet. You just need to make sure the combination of pedals daisy-chained together draw as much as or less current than the outlet can handle. For example, if the outlet is marked 210mA, and each of your pedals draw 50mA of current, then you can daisy-chain four pedals on that outlet (4 pedals x 50mA per pedal = 200mA... AOK).

The three "LDV" zones are what makes the powertrain1250 special. Not because they are 9V and can handle 210mA each. Not, because they are each independently isolated from all the other zones, but because of the trim pot next to each outlet. This is not your typical adjustable outlet, in fact the trim pot doesn't adjust the voltage, rather it adjusts the reaction time of the outlet. It is called "Load dependent voltage" or "LDV" for short. What does that even mean? Well, it goes back to a lot of hoopla about certain batteries making pedals sound better than other batteries.

Let me explain. When I first heard claims that different batteries make the pedals sound different, my gut reaction was to think "this is a load of snake oil". Then our friend Tommy Hatcher brought over a box of batteries and his vintage Fuzz-Face pedals and we started listening. The brand of battery really did seem to make a difference. I thought probably the batteries are not all exactly 9V and that we were hearing a difference in the headroom of the pedal.

So I set up a bench power supply with an adjustable voltage output. We adjusted the power from 9.6V down to 4.5V, but the pedals sounded exactly the same all the way down. Then what was making the pedals sound differently, if not the voltage?

To see what was going on, I hooked up an oscilloscope to monitor the batteries and began switching out different batteries. What I saw on the scope was totally unexpected. The battery's voltage was dipping and diving ever so slightly with each note that was being played. The batteries that sounded the best were the ones doing the most exaggerated dipping and diving. What I learned was this, as notes were passing through the pedal the pedal was drawing more or less current from the battery; and, as the current fluctuated, so did the voltage on the battery. Check out this graph (NOTE: for this picture, I set up the scope to give exaggerated readings in order to highlight what was happening on a much more subtle scale) you can see how the battery voltage dips when the signal through the pedal peaks and the battery voltage recovers when the signal dips. The effect of this is to give the pedal sound a softer edge.

Batteries do this because they generate voltage by means of chemical reactions, and those chemical reactions don't happen instantly, they have a bit of a time lag. So when the pedal demands more current, the voltage dips for a fraction of a second, then recovers. However, regular power supplies don't do this. They deliver current instantly and don't dip. Some power supplies have a way to adjust the voltage. Voodoo labs calls it a SAG control, but all it does is lower the voltage, which does cut headroom and that can change the sound of some pedals, but it's not the same as how a battery reacts. We found that even when a battery starts to get weak, it can still put out 9V if there is not much demand for current, but the weaker the battery gets, the more it starts to dip and dive with a demanding signal.

So for the powertrain1250, we designed a way to adjust the reaction time of the outlet, rather than adjust the voltage. Using the LDV control you can go from a stiff power supply with no dipping and diving, to what can be consider a nearly dead battery that dips and dives like crazy. No other pedal power supply has this, we invented it!

It needs to be said that results will depend on the pedal in use. Some pedals don't really care what you use for power, and other pedals don't sound good at all if the power dips too low. The pedals that seem to sound best when you play with the LDV setting are discrete analog pedals. I suggest that you experiment with playing through your pedal while slowly adjusting the LDV up and down, when you find a sweet spot, then leave it set there. Unlike a battery, once you set the LDV trim pot on the PT1250, it will stay that way, whereas a battery eventually is going to get weaker and drift away from the sweet spot.

I feel that the rest of this review is going to be anti-climatic after discussing the LDV. So what is left to say? A word about isolation. Each isolated zone is electrically separated from the other zones. This can help a lot with noise problems. For example, some digital pedals can pollute a power supply with clocking or sampling noises, and an analog pedal on the same power, especially one that has a high gain setting, will pick up that noise and amplify it. Keeping digital pedals on their own separately isolated zone solves this issue.

Another thing about isolation is that each zone acts like a separate battery, you can daisy-chain two 9V zones in series to make 18V, just like you can with two batteries. You can also, hook up two zones in parallel to get more current. For example, connecting two 9V 210mA zones in parallel will give you a single 9V 420mA zone.

The right-most zone is made up of four outlets that share 500mA of 9V power. This is where you want to connect any high power pedals. Since these four outlets share 500mA, you need to make sure the combination of all pedals daisy-chained on these adds up to 500mA or less. However, although the outlets are marked 500mA, this is a conservative number. In fact, this is the minimum guaranteed output under the worst possible conditions, minus 20%. In other words, if you were playing in the desert sun with 130V AC coming from the power company, it could still really handle 600mA; and in more realistic conditions, 700mA would be more like the actual limit. The same holds true for the other zones as well; the 210mA zones are OK up to 260mA and the 150mA zone discussed below can handle 180mA under normal conditions.

You probably aren't going to know the power current draw of each of your pedals just off the top of your head, but don't worry about hurting the PT1250 because each zone has built-in protection. If you happen to overload a zone with too many pedals, it will try to work for a few minutes, then the overloaded zone will turn off. Once you unplug the power for a minute, it will reset itself and start working again. Just move some of the pedals over to a different zone in order to spread the power more evenly. It may help to know that if a pedal can use a 9V battery, then it probably only uses a tiny amount of current, probably less than 20mA; these would be the ones to daisy-chain first if you need to free up extra outlets.

The left-most zone is also isolated from the others and has a switch that lets you choose 9V, 12V, 15V or 18V and can handle 150mA. This can be used for some pedals which can use up to 18V to give them more headroom. CAUTION, not all pedals can handle more than 9V, so make sure you check with the pedal manufacturer first!

And let's not forget to mention that the powertrain1250 uses a linear regulator circuit. A linear regulator produces the cleanest possible power. It makes the power supply a little heavier and a little more expensive. However, if you have noisy high gain settings, or want to make studio quality low noise recordings, then you are always better off using a linear power supply.

The PT1250 is housed in a heavy duty 18 gauge steel chassis which was designed specifically to fit underneath the pedaltrain line of pedal boards. However, it therefore fits on or under just about every other pedal board imaginable from the smallest to the largest. Measuring just under 6.5 inches (16.5cm) x 3.5 inches (8.8cm) x 1.75 inches (4.4cm), several of these can fit neatly side by side on a standard 1U 19 inch rack-mounted drawer for those mega pedal rigs if you need all that...

The PT1250 comes with a 5 year warranty and everything you need to go anywhere in the world. The package includes power cords representing every country on the planet. There is a switch to select 115V AC or 230V AC. In the 115V position the PT1250 can accept from 90V to 130V AC 50Hz or 60Hz. In the 230V position the PT1250 can accept from 180V to 260V AC 50Hz. You will want to check the position of this switch before plugging up the cord. As a reminder, there is a sticker taped across the AC inlet when you unpack your power supply for the first time.

Along with the set of international power cords there is also a set of spare fuses. With the PT1250 set to 115V, it will use a 400mA fuse, and when set to 230V it will use a 200mA fuse. There is a small drawer located by the AC inlet that holds the fuse and has an extra space for keeping a spare fuse handy.

Right beside the AC inlet is an AC outlet for daisy chaining power to another PT1250 or any other piece of gear. The outlet is connected directly in parallel with the inlet, so it does not go through the fuse meaning it can deliver a full 8 amps of current down the line. That's enough to power most amplifiers. It is important to note that what goes into the inlet is what comes out of the outlet. If you are plugged into 120V it will put out 120V and likewise, if you are plugged into 240V it is putting out 240V. For this reason, the outlet had to be an international IEC type connector in order to accommodate any voltage.

We found a good source of inexpensive AC adapter cords at Cables.com. The female outlet on the PT1250 is called a C13, and the male counterpart that will plug into it is called a C14. Below is a picture and link to a C14 to NEMA 5-15 that will work in the USA or Japan. However, if you want to daisy-chain two PT1250 together, you can make a direct connection using a C14 to C13 adapter such as the one pictured and linked to below.

USA or Japan

Daisy-chain adapter

Be sure to contact Creation Audio Labs (ph: 615-884-7520, email: info@CreationAudioLabs.com) if you’re interested or have any questions!

Alex “Skip” Welti is currently the V.P. of Research at Creation Audio Labs, Inc. a Nashville based pro audio service facility which also designs custom circuits and upgrades for pro audio gear and manufactures a line of products for guitar and bass. Skip is an abbreviation of "Skipper", a nickname Alex earned as National Service Manager for Soundcraft USA where he worked for 10 years before opening Creation Audio Labs. Prior to Soundcraft, he was with Westlake Audio in Los Angeles for eight years. As Technical Supervisor there, Alex helped out on projects such as Michael Jackson’s “Bad” and Paul Simon’s “Graceland”, among many, many others. A true techno-wizard, Skip the mad scientist is ever at work in his laboratory; dreaming about cheap clean energy, zero noise and even-order harmonic distortion.

~ Or, when is 9 volts really 9 volts?

"GREAT SCOTT!" ~ Doctor Emmett Brown

When it comes to electronics, it's easy to overlook the importance of what supplies the power. When we buy an electronic thing we're attracted to all the shiny objects, the bells and whistles, what it does, etc… we at most only give a fleeting thought towards what powers the thing as we plug it in, and rarely think about power again unless there is a problem. In a way, your power source is not unlike the engine in a car; in the sense that your car can have all the best gadgets and features, but if you don't have a good engine, it won't get you very far.

When it comes to Musicians and Music Lovers, etc… having good, clean power is the foundation of pure audio. And, since we're always trying to chain gear together in different ways to make a signal path (for example: Guitar >> pedal 1 >>pedal 2 >> DI >> mixer >> EQ's >> Amps >> Speakers, and so on) it helps to understand a little about how the power supplies behave when they are connected through the ground wires in your patch cords. For the purposes of this article, I just want to focus on pedal power.

With Pedal Power, you usually have two choices… 9V batteries, or AC adapters ("wall warts", "line lumps" and "Pedal Power Bricks"). They all have some obvious pros and cons and your choice will probably depend on the pros outweighing the cons in a given situation. For instance, out on the road playing a live show, I'd hope I'm not going to be shut down by a dead battery, whereas in a recording studio, I'm going to want the cleanest possible sound. If I'm doing a lot of sessions and playing live, I might compromise a little for convenience being on the go.

Batteries come in lead, alkaline, lithium and rechargeable varieties to name a few. They generate 9V via chemical reactions. Once the chemicals are depleted the battery is discharged and dies. In the case of rechargeable batteries, chargers cause these chemical reactions to run in reverse so you can use the same battery again and again, they can be good for several hundred to thousands of charging cycles.

"Can different batteries really make a pedal sound different?"

You would think from a pedal's perspective, it shouldn't make much difference which kind of battery I use as long as it can deliver enough voltage and current. HOWEVER, it does make a difference DEPENDING on the pedal's design. You may ask, "Can different batteries really make a pedal sound different?" The answer is "YES!"

But why?

The battery's voltage may seem like an obvious answer… the voltage may be 9V or it may be 9.6V or it may be a weak 4.5V or whatever – voltage can effect most pedal's analog signal paths in terms of limiting headroom. You hear a lot about running some pedals at 18V for increased headroom (warning: not all pedals can handle it, so experiment at your own peril!). A lot of pedals fart-out and sound terrible if the voltage gets too low, but some other pedals, particularly analog fuzz pedals, sound better. I've done some limited testing, by no means extensive research, and the trend seems to favor pedals with discrete analog designs over pedals with digital circuits. One shining example is the classic Fuzz Face pedal which sounds differently as the battery dies; good, but different.

Another, not so obvious reason batteries can make pedals sound different is the battery's impedance. What does that mean? One way to describe this would be in terms of how "stiff" the 9V is. Does the voltage sag, dip or bounce? Actually, batteries do all this. Those chemical reactions which generate the voltage are not instantaneous, they can lag, and there is resistance, capacitance and inductance in the various parts that make up a battery – without getting into a science class, all this means is that in subtle ways, depending on how your pedal sucks the life from a battery (which may in turn depend on how you are playing your instrument) the battery's voltage may be swinging, sagging and rebounding – some chemistries more so than others. That can affect how your pedal sounds. If the battery is "stiff", your pedal will be more hard clipped when it runs out of headroom. On the other hand, if the battery is not "stiff", your pedal will have a softer clipping which can sometimes be described as a tube-like quality. Again, there are some pedals that don't care and other pedals that blow chunks – you'll have to experiment.

Besides being 9V, batteries will have a rating for milliamp hours, abbreviated "mAh". This is an indication of how long the battery should last. For example, a 9V 600 mAh battery should run a 60 mA pedal for 10 hours, and a 9V 1200 mAh battery should run the same pedal for 20 hours. I've tested a lot of batteries. In general, it seems the higher the mAh number, the "stiffer" the battery is; and the lower the mAh number the "softer" the battery is. Also, it is important to note that when a battery gets weaker, it also gets softer. I've found that as the battery gets weaker the voltage usually doesn't drop much at first, it can be putting out almost 9V but the swinging, sagging and rebounding starts getting more and more pronounced.

Pros, Batteries are inherently isolated sources of power, so they aren't going to create ground loops. And because they are not connected to the grid and develop voltage with chemistry they have a very good clean, almost nonexistent noise floor. The Con is that they die. Yeah, they do that… so you have to spend a bunch of money on spare batteries, and chances are you'll waste a lot of money changing out batteries before a show, batteries that might still be good, just in case they might die (or not). If you swear by batteries you probably have a box of half used batteries that you don't want to throw away, but you don't know if they can be trusted. Rechargeable batteries might be the solution, but you'll want two sets, one set in your pedals, and a back-up set on the chargers. That can get expensive. In a short time, you can easily spend more money on batteries than it would cost to buy AC power adapters.

We helped pedaltrain develop a rechargeable battery pack called the VOLTO. It is sort of like a pedal power brick in the sense that it is a stand-alone unit which you can use to power a small pedal board, rather than having to install batteries inside each pedal. We learned a lot in the development process. Lithium Ion batteries are currently the lightest and most power dense batteries by weight available in mass production. They come in 3.7V cells which can be stacked together for 7.4V or 11.1V. That means to get the battery pack to put out 9V, a regulator circuit is needed to convert the voltage. The design of this regulator circuit is extremely important so as not to pollute the chemically clean battery voltage. There are cheap knock-offs of the VOLTO that use switching regulators which pollute the power with a high noise floor. In the case of a genuine VOLTOwe designed a hybrid circuit that uses an expensive linear regulator which preserves the almost nonexistent noise floor of the battery. Also, with the genuine VOLTO we made sure it would be possible to charge the battery while powering your pedals at the same time.

AC adapters ("wall warts", "line lumps" and "Pedal Power Bricks") come in all sorts. For this article I am going to limit the conversation to the DC variety. Acknowledging they can be from 5V up to 48V I want to focus on the 9V ones since that’s what most pedals use and for the purpose of comparing them with batteries.

Of the 9V DC wall wart options you can find regulated and unregulated varieties. Regulated means that no matter what the power company throws at you, the adapter will attempt to keep the output locked at 9V. They clean-up the noise and protect you from power spikes. On the other hand, Unregulated means if the power company voltage dips down or jumps up, the 9V will also dip down or jump up, and any noise coming from the power company will get through as well. These adapters are the cheapest you can find. But they risk being noisy, and won't protect you from power spikes.

"Linear regulation provides the cleanest power"

Of the regulated options you can choose from linear regulation or switch mode regulation. Linear regulation provides the cleanest power. A well designed linear power supply will have an almost nonexistent noise floor just like a battery. Linear regulators lock the output at 9V by burning off excess voltage in the form of heat. It's done in a brute force kind of way, so they do waste a little power. And usually, they only work in one country, so if you take an American version to Europe, you might be in for some troubles.

Due to government regulations companies are being forced to build adapters with Switch Mode regulation because they waste less electricity. Almost every new wall wart and line lump you find will be switch mode. These can also be made cheaper and put out more amperage for their size and weight. Another big advantage is that they can work in any country from 100VAC in Japan to 120VAC in North America and 240VAC elsewhere.

However, of all the switch mode adapters I've ever seen, they always have really high noise floors because of the way they work. Instead of burning off excess voltage, they lock the output at 9V by switching the power on and off really fast (being "off" part of the time saves electricity) then filtering the switched output with inductors and capacitors to get a somewhat clean 9V. This switching happens at about 100,000 to a million times a second. Although it happens at frequencies above what humans can hear, that noise still eats up headroom in your signal path and can sometimes alias against the sample rates of digital converter chips found in digital effect pedals, causing distortions we can hear and psycho-acoustic phenomena we can feel.

Pedal Power Bricks as far as I have seen, are always regulated, and most of them still have linear regulation. However, there are a few switch mode versions beginning to hit the market. Power Bricks are basically beefy adapters with multiple outlets that give you a variety of options. You can usually pick 9V or 12V, some have up to 18V, some you can adjust anywhere from 4.5 to 9V and some have both AC and DC outputs.

In terms ofchaining together effect pedals, what you will run into is choosing power with isolated vs. non-isolated outputs. Whereas batteries are inherently isolated, when you start daisy chaining power to have multiple pedals sharing the same source you could get ground loops and noise problems. Often, digital pedals will pollute a power supply with clocking and switching noise which can resurface as excessive noise floor in a high gain analog pedal sharing the same source. Ideally, you would love for each pedal to have its own isolated power supply but that can get expensive and messy (try fitting a dozen wall warts under your pedaltrain). Some pedals will play nice together, for instance you can usually daisy chain analog pedals, as long as you keep digital pedals on their own separate power adapters. A lot of power bricks will have individually isolated outputs. Think of each output as if it was its own separate battery. Aside from fixing noise problems, when you have isolated outputs you can stack them together to get 18V or run them in parallel to get more amperage by using special Y cables.

Bricks vs. Batteries - Perhaps in an attempt to satisfy battery advocates, some power bricks offer a "sag" control which is just a variable output so you can adjust the voltage down to 4.5V. Although this will affect the headroom in your pedals, the power supply is still putting out very stiff voltages. As discussed above in the section on batteries, sometimes having power that's not so stiff helps your pedal have a softer, tube-like clipping quality. Almost all adapters and power bricks put out very stiff voltages, which means your pedals will experience hard clipping.

There is one exception, we helped design a pedal power brick for pedaltrain. Our powertrain 1250 (PT1250) uses a novel circuit that lets you adjust the impedance of the output power - allowing the voltage to lag, swing, dip and rebound just like a real battery. We didn't know what sort of cool name to give it, so we just called it by what it technically does, "LDV" or "Load Dependent Voltage ". You can adjust the LDV trim pot and go from emulating a fresh, new, stiff battery to emulating a weak, old, soft battery, and any sort of battery in-between. You can play through your pedal and adjust the power supply to get the best sound of a semi-soft battery, then not have to worry about an actual battery that would continue to die off. We made sure those outputs would be isolated and used the best linear regulators on the market so that it has the same almost nonexistent noise floor as if it was really just a battery. In addition, we made sure to give it a 115/230V switch so you can take it to other countries as well as an extra AC outlet so that you can daisy chain power to use multiple powertrain 1250's, get power to an amplifier or some other gear.

"The powertrain 1250 is really the best of both worlds, you get everything good about a battery; isolation, low noise floor and a way to simulate that chemistry between a battery and a pedal that makes some pedals sound so good, but without the worry that the battery is going to die, or the expense of constantly replacing batteries…" ~ John Chandler

A quick search shows that you could spend about $180 to get twenty 9V Ultra Life Lithium batteries… But, for a lot less money you can get a powertrain 1250 to power those same 20 pedals forever… hmmm, math is fun, isn't it!

We've done a lot of homework on batteries and power supplies. In the next 10 years or less, you should be able to pick up a rechargeable power brick that can run 30 pedals for days between charges. Already existing today in university laboratories are rechargeable batteries based on carbon nano tubes that can hold twice as much power in half the space, and they are able to fully charge in minutes. They will be cheap, safe and easy to produce – but there are still years of bureaucratic red tape that must be navigated to get them to market. I hope we will see new pedals produced with these batteries integrated right inside, not unlike an iPhone, so you will never have another issue with dirty power, ground noises or isolation ever again. One laboratory I read about has tested a diamond battery made from recycled nuclear waste that they say can power a watch for thousands of years… read Forbes Article. I mean it's great to be alive now, seeing the birth of so much incredible technology, but man, to see what will be possible in another 100 years, that would be something!

Be sure to contact Creation Audio Labs (ph: 615-884-7520, email: info@CreationAudioLabs.com) if you’re interested or have any questions!

Alex “Skip” Welti is currently the V.P. of Research at Creation Audio Labs, Inc. a Nashville based pro audio service facility which also designs custom circuits and upgrades for pro audio gear and manufactures a line of products for guitar and bass. Skip is an abbreviation of "Skipper", a nickname Alex earned as National Service Manager for Soundcraft USA where he worked for 10 years before opening Creation Audio Labs. Prior to Soundcraft, he was with Westlake Audio in Los Angeles for eight years. As Technical Supervisor there, Alex helped out on projects such as Michael Jackson’s “Bad” and Paul Simon’s “Graceland”, among many, many others. A true techno-wizard, Skip the mad scientist is ever at work in his laboratory; dreaming about cheap clean energy, zero noise and even-order harmonic distortion.

~In the Spotlight

Having played on soundtracks such as "Talladega Nights" and "Anchorman" with Will Ferrell, and "The Switch" with Jennifer Aniston to his credit, Teddy Kumpel is a New York based guitar player, singer, producer and engineer who has played with the likes of Joe Jackson, Rickie Lee Jones, Feist, Nine Inch Nails, Phil Lesh, Marshall Crenshaw and Laura Branigan to name just a few.

"Teddy is my favorite effects guitar player." ~ Adrian Belew

(King Crimson, the Talking Heads, David Bowie, etc.)

We recently caught up with Teddy on tour with Joe Jackson in Nashville TN. The performance at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center was possibly one of the best sounding shows I've ever witnessed. The fans were incredibly enthusiastic and the atmosphere was extremely intimate. It really was as if we caught Joe and the band right at home and they invited us in to hang for the evening. It was a big thrill for me, having listened to Joe Jackson on the original MTV airings in the early 80's, to see one of our Classic Holy Fire 48v effect pedals flickering away on Teddy's pedal board.

We met with Teddy after the show. There was talk of extending the tour and adding dates. I really do recommend that you try to catch them live. You won't be disappointed.

Asking Teddy how it was going with his Holy Fire pedal, his response was...

"Clearly you guys made a deal with the devil to invent this pedal. It goes from down and dirty to heavenly in a single bound! The Holy Fire is an essential part of my rig... it's on 80% of the time and acts as my basic sound. It's extremely high quality and even with no drive on it improves the sound of my guitar drastically. It just makes everything I play sound more better!"

We promise Teddy, no deals were made with the devil... quite the opposite ;-)

Teddy's performance was amazing. With one guitar and a battalion of effects he covered all the bases and left no stone unturned.

LOOPestra: an orchestra of guitar loops

With innovative use of looping technology and his vast experience mangling vintage and modern sounds Teddy effortlessly creates myriad textures that make you think there must be a whole slew of musicians hiding backstage.Despite what the multi layered sound might tell you, everything you hear from Teddy Kumpel on stage is played live.

You can learn more about Teddy by visiti

~A practical way to get rid of hums and buzzes in your studio.

I've been at it for 30 years and spent a lot of time fixing hums and buzzes. From Westlake Studios in LA, where we had the power company install an isolation transformer on the the entire building, and the production assistants would water the ground stakes everyday; to Brentwood Baptist Church in Tennessee where a cell phone tower hidden in the steeple wrecked havoc on the audio; to a theater in Huntsville Alabama where we found a power strip full of phone charging wall warts near the console was making everything hum. Throughout the years I have found there are only ever three things that make a system hum. Forgive me if this information is redundant to you, but I want to be thorough.

Hums are 50 or 60Hz related to the AC power from the power company, buzzes are multiples of those frequencies. Other noises like hiss, frying, crackling, popping, etc... are usually problems in the electronics of the audio system itself. However, hums are usually a problem in the way things are installed, and buzzes are usually a problem in the power supply. If you are hearing a buzz, then you can probably skip to step #2 below.

1. The usual problem is ground loops. If the ground was absolutely, perfectly 0 volts because you paid to install superconductors throughout your building and to the power company, then ground loops would never be a problem. No matter how much current circulated around in ground loops, the difference in potential between any two pieces of gear would never be more than zero, and there would be no hum. Having said that, it follows that making sure the building itself is wired with good grounds goes a long way to reducing ground loop problems. However, all commercially available, real world wiring has some resistance, and if current starts to flow around a ground loop, according to ohms law, that resistance times current creates a difference in voltage, and that means hum in your audio.

The only sure way to prove if your hum is due to a ground loop or not, is to physically unplug every cable from the console so that there is absolutely nothing (not even speakers) connected. With only the power supply connected, listen with headphones to the noise floor. I learned this lesson the hard way as a young tech in the late 80's. I was called out to fix hums at a newly installed control room at Cimarron Studios in Hollywood. I was geeking out because when I got there they were recording voice overs for Alvin and the Chipmunks. They were on a tight deadline and I thought unplugging everything would be a waste of time. So I went about unplugging one thing at a time and plugging it back in if the hum didn't go away. After going around the mountain once or twice and finding no one thing made the hum go away. I finally unplugged everything to find out the console alone was dead quiet.

All you should hear is hiss. However, with the inputs not terminated, they could pick up hums and buzzes, so to make this a fair test, make sure the input gains aren't all maxed out. If there is still a hum with everything unplugged go to step #2 or #3 below. But normally, you should be able to leave up an average sort of mix on the console, crank up the control room volume and get nothing but hiss in the headphones. Hopefully that is your case, then you can start plugging in one cable at a time, listening after each connection to see if a hum has returned. I like to start with the speakers, so I can get away from using the headphones as soon as possible.

Don't be surprised if connecting a cable to an input makes an output hum even with the faders off and muted. Ground loops can go around faders and switches, and take funny pathways (so plugging in an aux could make a group start to hum). If the hum comes back, unplug the last cable and investigate if that piece of gear has a problem or needs to be ground lifted or have an isolation transformer installed. And so on, down the line until everything is hooked up again. Later down the road, if you add new gear, check for hums one connection at a time.

Going about it this way, if the hums were gone, but then getting all the connections to be quiet continues to be elusive; and no matter what grounding, lifting, isolating, etc. you try just doesn't do the trick, the building itself may have an electrical or ground problem. Any sort of bad connection between the console and absolute ground at the service ground stake could be an issue, there could even be ground loops in the wiring of the AC outlets themselves.

If the building grounds are proven to be good then this won't really matter, but it doesn't hurt to do this: Most buildings have two or three phases of AC power, you should try to keep all the audio gear on the same phase. That usually means every other breaker in the breaker box. From top to bottom they usually go phase A, phase B, phase A, phase B, and so on (that way you can use a double wide breaker to send 240 volts to an Air Conditioner or whatever). Check that all the outlets you are using for audio go to the same phase of power, skipping over every other breaker. Use the opposite AC power phase for lights and microwave ovens, etc...

2. The next most usual problem is noise coming from the power supply. This will usually be a buzz because the way they rectify AC to make DC typically creates 120 Hz ripple. That should normally be filtered out and regulated by the power supply before it gets to the signal components. So if there is a problem in the power supply, it could be letting buzz get to the audio path.

If you unplugged everything in step #1 above and still have a 60Hz hum, maybe the power supply is missing a ground. Any discussion of the power supply includes all the intervening cables and connectors between the inside of the power supply and the inside of the console. If a spare power supply is handy try swapping it to pin down or eliminate the power supply quickly. I would usually never trust a switch-mode power supply, they are notoriously noisy and the power is typically soft (which makes for poor audio bass response), if you don't have a linear power supply, getting one should be a high priority.

These things could be putting out an electromagnetic field that can cross-talk into the console circuitry or the audio snakes. Don't just turn those things off, unplug them, wall-warts too! A lot of things still generate hum fields as long as they are plugged in, even if they are switched off. Also, make sure the console's power supply is not directly under the console!