Power Supply for Pedals

[brandonmays]

I have a first year HT Dual. I am looking for a back-up power supply for my unit. Has anyone found anything that will replace these? I'm assuming BLACKSTAR doesn't sell power supplies separately.

I hope someone steps up & makes something that can run 2 or 3 pedals at once. We're seeing some companies offering this for EVENTIDE pedals, but it's a slow go for other juice hungry pedals. Someone needs to specifically address juice requirements for BLACKSTAR pedals & multiple pedals at that.

I found a power supply that would work but it is ridiculously expensive.

[R.G.]

I'm assuming BLACKSTAR doesn't sell power supplies separately.

Your cost to actually find that out instead of assuming is almost exactly the same as you've spent writing this post - that is, typing one email. You might be pleasantly surprised.

I found a ]power supply that would work but it is ridiculously expensive.

DIN-rail anything tends to be expensive, as this niche is largely industrial, not consumer. The user manual on the HT dual says that it uses 22V at an amp or so. This is so suspiciously just below the standard and common-as-dirt 24Vdc power supplies that fill the market today that I would be mildly surprised if Blackstar didn't do their prototyping with 24V and then make the power supply 22V for production so it would be unique(r).

But in any case, you could simply use a good-quality 24Vdc power supply, chosen for being quiet, and then add a couple of diodes to the output to drop the voltage by about 2V. Now you have a good, cheap 22V power supply at perhaps many amperes. For instance, a >>cheap<< 24Vdc power supply producing 24V at 20 amps (!) can be had for under US$20. This beast will likely be noisy, but at that price, you can afford some filtering and voltage dropping components. This option requires tinkering with power wiring, so alas, it's not a simple plug-in solution, but it does point out a direction.

Here's a thought. Do you >know< that the HT Dual won't run fine on 24Vdc, which is easily and cheaply available?

Even better, since you have one original power supply already, some gentle electronic detective work would ferret out what the actual (as opposed to nominal) output voltage is, both at no load and in actual operation, and what the actual current supplied to the HT dual is. That would tell you a whole lot about what the pedal actually works on.

And finally, by now you've figured out that real, normal people should be careful about asking builders and hackers if [something] is possible. The hackers and builders will almost never say "no", but instead come up with many schemes for doing it.

[mozwell]

Brandon
Since you have a working power supply, measure it. Does it have an AC or DC output, is it a 2.1 or 2.5mm DC jack, or some other type, what is the voltage.
I have attached a sch for a blackstar DS-2 HT Dual, which looks as it it uses a 15VAC or 16VAC supply input (bottom of page 1). Im not sure if this sch matches your unit.
16VAC x 1.414 - 0.6 = 22V
The HV for the valves is generated with a small switch mode supply.

As the switch mode for the HV 270V supply is regulated with feedback, all we really need is for the +22V to be more than (say) 18VDC and less than 25VDC
So a 15VAC to 18VAC at somewhere over 0.4A is really all you need.
There are off the shelf units 15VAC 0.4A fitted with a 2.1mm jack for around USD $10 available in the states.