Power conditioner question.

[Boy Howdy]

Do power conditioners consume any appreciable power when they are turned on but have no electronic devices plugged into them? Thanks in advance for any replies.

[Mick Bailey]

None of the types I come across relating to guitar or audio have any significant power consumption. There are different types and the ones with a display and those with intelligent monitoring have a very slight power draw even with no load. The older 'dumb' units that are basically a large inductor and half a dozen caps (such as the older Furman boxes) don't consume anything.

I recently evaluated a rack mount unit that was fan cooled and had a display and microprocessor and this did have a small quiescent power draw on account of the low-voltage internal PSU, but there was a trim pot to turn the fan off under low or no load conditions. Even with the fan running I wouldn't call it appreciable power draw.

[Enzo]

Power draw like your bedside alarm clock or something. Even the fancy ones with computer processing stuff are still tiny little circuits.

[Jazz P Bass]

"Power Conditioners'.
Hmmph.
What a misused term when most marketed items simply use couple of capacitors and surge devices.
A true power conditioner is not cheap.
https://www.grainger.com/category/el...r-conditioners

[Enzo]

I used to sell the Tripp-Lite line of power conditioners. Cost nowhere near that much. Conditioning is a relative term. SImpler units are basically filters, they condition the power by removing noise from it and killing transient spikes. But for my computers I used voltage regulating types. HAd all the filters and MOVs but also had a constant voltage output even when the mains danced around.

[Boy Howdy]

I have a Tripp Lite that I got at Goodwill for next to nothing. Basically I just use it as power strip . . . that won't fall over (because it's heavy) and has a convenient on-off switch. Sit it on top of my Hammond organ so I don't have to bend over and deal with all the other crap located on the floor.

Thanks again for the replies, ya'll.

[nevetslab]

I've had good luck over the years with Topaz Constant Voltage line conditioners.

[Mick Bailey]

I can't recall the name of the last unit I evaluated for a customer, but it did a pretty good job. The output was 230v and it held this right down to 160v input, and as far as my Variac would go up to 300v. It maintained the sine wave output under full load with this input voltage range. The real downside was that it had no capacity for any input supply interruption greater than a few mS (this needed an additional battery pack) and consequently the slightest dropout caused a reboot cycle and total loss of power for quite a few seconds. So it behaved like a line-interactive UPS without the UPS part.