Power strips/ surge suppressors

[ctmsound]

Monster Pro 3500 is a piece of poo compared to the new Furman PL 2 series. If you're serious about power conditoning, go Furman (no, I'm not a rep).

http://www.furmansound.com/pro/reg/reg6.htm

http://www.furmansound.com/pro/REFERENCE/itref1.htm

[joeysimms]

I have a furman AR1215 conditioner, with a heavy guage extention cable running it to the fridge outlet (i'm currently set up in my kitchen.). All my gear is then run either direct into the conditioner, or through a strip plugged into the conditioner. it's a cheap fix on a not-so-good temporary set up, in an old apt. building with lousy power.

[bigtoe]

"I have a furman AR1215 conditioner"

i think i have a couple of these...they are also voltage regulators...worth the extra $ if you go into places with questionable power.

MIke

[dubold]

The best relatively inexpensive solution I could find was a UPS, also; I have US$50 ($35 on sale) APC ones that essentially are batteries that are constantly charging from the wall outlet

what's the model number on those, and where can I find one? I think I need one-- well, okay, I'm sure I need one, since I just dodged a bullet with a power surge at my apt.

I used up all my luck, time to get a little protection....

[KennyLusk]

I've been thinking about this for awhile now, but I don't know much about these things.....I'm thinking of getting one or two of the cheaper Furman conditioners (PL8-II, or something). Would there be any problems running all the power for my band's practice space through these (two guitar amps, bass amp, small pa)? There is a bit of hum at our space.

Kyle, it could be a problem. It's all about amp's...as in amperes. The average power conditioner strip is rated at 15 amps, which means you can only draw 15 amps off of that strip.

So if you're Marshall draws 6 amps and your bass players H&K draws 5 amps and your PA system draws 6 amps, then you're 2 amps overdrawn and you'll blow the fuse.

You're effects rack draws amps too.

For a fully electric band you might consider 2 conditioners running on different sockets in your jam-pad.

Personally I've been working with a Juice Goose for $34 at MF and it's just as effective as a low-end Furman.

[mpedrummer]

Well, let's throw in the old $0.02, eh?

I'm currently a 'weekend warrior', meaning that I work a day job. This particular day job is writing custom code for a company that provides outsourced IT support for many, many other companies (no, I'm not in India...yet)...we do physical support...if it breaks, we come fix it.

Anyway, the point of this rambling is thus:

UPS's, while good, vary in quality. Most (especially if it cost less than $300) run off wall power when it's available, and switch over to battery power in the event of an outage (or over/under-voltage, if it's a better one). Therefore, you are NOT fully isolated from street power. In a way, this is good...the batteries in those things are mega-expensive, and are only good for so long...running full-time on battery power means you'd be replacing them far more often.

Additionally, we replace more power supplies in servers protected by TrippLite UPS's than any other brand. They do fine with the switch over TO battery, but seem to let surges through when street power returns, juicing the equipment.

For my home studio, I have two UPS's: an APC SU1400 for the computer/soundcard, and an SU700 for the monitors/gear I would cry about if it got fried. Together, this gives me about 15 minutes without power, but isn't truly isolated from much of anything. Therefore, I have a middle-of-the-line Furman power conditioner that both UPSs plug into. It's not perfect, but so far, so good.

Anyway, just thought I'd weigh in.

MPEDrummer

[KennyLusk]

MPEDrummer,

So, you recommend APC as a reliable product?

and...

I don't see anything on their site that talks about RF filtering. Do you know what kind of filtering they do (if any) ?

[Coco]

Was just on the Furman site. Totally confused as to what I need. Looked at the AR15. Do I need one of these for every rack I have? One rack is full of mic pres, the other with eq's, comps ect. So do I need an Ar-15 or a PL-2 or what???? I dont want to spend a shitload of cash but a few hundered on each would be ok. I am just a little confused about this power coditioning thing.

[jamesridge]

You might want to think of protection and conditioning as two seperate tasks. For protection, check out Brickwall at http://www.brickwall.com. They make a line of surge protectors that are inductor (not MOV) based, so they react very quickly and don't wear out; they also don't shunt to ground. Their whole product line is available with isolated outlets.

Conditioning to me is more of a black art. If I had big money and was really interested, I would check out balanced power systems over the AVR available in most UPSs. Cheap AVRs are typically stepped so you still have voltage jumps.

Jay[/url]

[KennyLusk]

The PL-2's look like the new shizz.

They say they're filtering RF Twice.

Jamesridge, I totally agree with you about conditioning and protection being 2 seperate tasks.

I have a UPS for my HD and a line conditioner and the same configuration for my rack which houses my mic pre's, effects and mixing board.

2 different purposes entirely.

[Coco]

looking at the PL-Pro for my racks of pres ect. Price seems pretty good about $320. Checked out the brick wall stuff. Good prices on that too. Sorry for my ignorance about this, but would I use the brickwall surge protection, then plug the Furman units and computer into that?

[I'm Painting Again]

i dont use any right now..dont seem to have any problems..though im saving for the hospital grade stuff in the future..big$$ but i like to spend it on the little weird things like power and cables..

[KennyLusk]

looking at the PL-Pro for my racks of pres ect. Price seems pretty good about $320. Checked out the brick wall stuff. Good prices on that too. Sorry for my ignorance about this, but would I use the brickwall surge protection, then plug the Furman units and computer into that?

Right.

Surge protection and/or UPS first, then the line conditioning and RF filtering (Furman).

[oyrgawd]

So, I just got a Monster Pro 2500 power conditioner (the kind that shows the incoming voltage), and it seems I'm getting between 126 and >129 volts. When it goes over 129 volts, it automatically shuts off its power feed (obviously uncool for recording).

So here's my question: is it really really bad to have over-standard voltage?

I could get a conditioner like the Furman AR1215 to cover just the studio stuff, but if it's bad for everything (home stereo, TV, appliances) I should get an electrician to really fix the problem. I could also just keep what I have and leave the mission-critical stuff plugged into regular power strips, but then I'm not getting the high-falutin Monster filtering.

Advice?

Thanks,
o

[oyrgawd]

(bump)