I’ve been on a power supply kick over the last few months. On my personal board I’ve been running a Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2+ for a long time, but ran out of power outputs. I ended up pulling power from a Boss LS-2 via One Spot daisy chain, which caused a new set of problems for me.. primarily noise. I recently added a new Creation Audio Labs Powertrain to have dual *clean* power for my board, and it’s working great!
I just saw that Strymon will be offering a power supply very soon – called the Strymon Zuma. Knowing Strymon, we can probably expect a couple of things. 1) Excellent product with clean design 2) Probably won’t be cheap, but will be worth every penny. There are a few builders out there getting into power and is clearly an interesting market to explore with increasing demand as pedals and boards start piling up for musicians. Clean power is critical!
At first, I was expecting standard power options, but of course Strymon took things up a notch. First off, all of their outputs are 500mA. That’s crazy. Milliamps (mA) is the actual current that powers our pedals. Volts are not, and that is something people get confused with. For example bigger pedals require higher milliamps to function, but accept it at 9V. Most power supplies offer a group of 9V/100mA with a couple of 9V/250mA outputs, so it’s amazing that they’re offering 500mA on all their outs.
There are two 500mA outputs with the options to change the voltage from 9 to 12 to 18 volts. If the voltage goes up, the milliamps go down on those outputs. For example, if set to 12V it will be 375mA and 18V will give you 250mA.
They also mention ‘dual isolation’ which gives you two stages of isolation. Isolation means quiet!
Okay, let’s talk next level now. So my particular example – I have a Pedaltrain PT-2. It’s a good sized pedal board. Nothing huge, I would say pretty average. The Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2, ran out of outputs for all the pedals on that sized board. I’m about 4 short if I remember correctly. The Strymon Zuma has a 24V OUT plug… and wait for it…. plugs into the Ojai which is a expansion power supply! What?! The Ojai will get you 5 more 9V/500mA outputs and is just a little guy! To me, this is a game changer. This would lighten my board right now, and be PERFECT!
Pricing? I have no idea. Release date? Their site says it’s coming Summer 2016. I’m excited. What do you think? Comment below!
