Power Strips with Surge Protection

[Old No7]

This might be "old news" for the old hands here, but in the interest of helping any new folks who might come here, I'll offer this info.

The Furman SS-6B 6-outlet power strip was recommended to me when I first started building my home studio, and I've had no issues with mine (5+ years now). I have gigged out of the house with it several times and the 15' cord came in handy a few times too.



This one, the D'Addario Tour-Grade Power Base 8-outlet power strip is new to me, but I recently picked one up brand new at a local shop -- and at 22% less than SW's online price -- and it helps out in one corner of my setup where there are a number of wall warts to plug in. The shorter 6' cord isn't an issue as the wall plug is only 2' away from where it's staged, and the cord-management feature is pretty helpful too.



I'm sure there are other options, including rack mounted ones, but these are the ones I've used and have had good luck with to date.

Old No7

 

[Biggles]

You are a wise man using these.

A power strip that provides both conditioning and surge protection is the best one to go for.

A conditioning circuit will smooth out and transients that there may be in the mains supply and the surge protection will react very quickly to stop any spike in the supply being transferred downstream.

If say there was a neutral fault then a spike or surge will blow the device power supply at best and maybe the main circuit board.

Managing the Electrical power, standby generation, uninterruptible power supplies (rotary and static) used to be part of my job in various sites including a few Computer Centres, Data Centres and Mobile Phone hubs.

 

[TedS]

For many years now, I've plugged my arranger workstations into a uninterruptible power supply (UPS) of the type more commonly used for computers. Unlike a surge protector, these have battery back up that will keep the keyboard alive, at least for several minutes.

If power were to be suddenly lost during certain operations, such as OS updates, or even writing settings to internal memory, it's possible that the board could be corrupted. You could lose your data. To recover, you might have to reload the operating system and musical resources.

A UPS is cheap insurance to make sure the power stays on, and it also does a good job of smoothing out surges and sags in the line voltage. My $.02.

 

[happyrat1]

I've used a few of these for everything from power saws to studio gear with zero surge burnouts over the last 30 years.

When they say "heavy duty" they mean it.

 

[Bouncingogre]

Very good advice from all of you, and Thank you.
We live quite close to the Pennines in the UK. Power surges are frequent, and so I will be checking out what is and isn't surge protected today.

 

[Biggles]

Very good advice from all of you, and Thank you.
We live quite close to the Pennines in the UK. Power surges are frequent, and so I will be checking out what is and isn't surge protected today.

A few years ago there was a fault on our local supply.

The fault blew up the electronic devices we had which were not protected.

Kitchen radio, Microwave, bedside clock radio and a DVD Recorder/Player all went kaput.

We now have adapters something similar to these in use on devices with live 24/7 electronics.

 

[Bouncingogre]

Good price too at Screwfix. I shall be ordering some for pickup next week.
Thanks Biggles

 

[delaware dave]

A better option is a line conditioner/voltage regulator. In addition to doing all of the above-mentioned protection it also provides the all important voltage stabilization of 117V (US metric). I've been using the same voltage regulator (Tripplite LC1200) since the 90's when i was carrying a B3/147, Rhodes, Wurli, Clav, Prophet and CP70, two mixers, power amps and large JBL speakers. Got a lot of voltage sag which wreaked havoc with the old analog equipment. The voltage regulator helped to maintain the needed voltage that the equipment needed in order to work properly and stay in tune. The old equipment is gone but the voltage regulator still gets used every show. I would venture that at least 20% of the venues i play show a yellow light (low voltage) and the voltage regulator raises the voltage to a normal level. Never leave home without it, it sits in my gig bag.

 

[happyrat1]

While I use the Belkin Power Bar for my keyboards and mixer, I also use an APC UPS for the Tascam SD Recorder since that thing is basically a computer which cannot afford to crash during an SD card write operation.

https://www.amazon.ca/APC-BE600M1-Back-Uninterrupted-Electronics-Computers/dp/B01FWAZEIU/

EDIT>>> It also eliminates the possibility of an accidental unsfafe shutdown when turning off the instruments with the power bar.

And I also follow proper procedure for startups and shutdowns by first bringing the powerbar live, then the instruments and mixer one at a time to avoid creating a surge, then tascam and then the monitors to avoid that nasty turnon thump. Shutdown is same procedure in reverse.

Power is insanely stable in the Niagara Toronto Corridor though.

Last time we had a blackout was 3 years ago when one of the transformers next door blew sky high. That was a day for wearing the brown trousers

 

[mwtzzz]

I run the PA for my band. We've done 80+ gigs in the past two years in SoCal in all kinds of venues (bars, Moose Lodges, city parks, restaurants, indoors, outdoors, etc). I run all our equipment (mains, wedges, keyboards, bass amp, guitar amps, pedal boards, etc) off of consumer-grade $10 surge protectors from Amazon. No problem. Cheap consumer surge protectors use the same equipment (metal oxide varistors) as more expensive ones, there's no real need to spend more money.

 

[Donald Brown]

How does one determine when one of these surge protectors, etc. needs replacing? As I understand it, these devices frequently receive spikes, etc. which degrades it's ability to protect. An illustration of small picks at the wall of a damn will eventually cause a leak and then a breakdown of the entire wall. I know when my UPS will no longer support the operation of equipment during a power outage, it's time to replace the battery or replace the entire unit. Unfortunately, the cost of a battery is close to the cost of just getting a new unit. Replacing the unit might be better as the new one offer more capabilities. I'm just unclear about the surge protectors.

 

[BrianT]

I have contemplated whether going beyond just the typical power strips would be worthwhile for gigging. I have not done so. Occasionally, we might have a gig where power is questionable (often outside) but have really not had issues.

UPS type setups could both filter and provide brief backup but not for long. Battery/inverter setups (Jackery, Bluetti, similar) could potentially provide very clean power for several hours of play time with no connection to external sources.

Dunno. I have never had an issue. But it's something I think about sometimes.

 

[mwtzzz]

How does one determine when one of these surge protectors, etc. needs replacing? As I understand it, these devices frequently receive spikes, etc. which degrades it's ability to protect. An illustration of small picks at the wall of a damn will eventually cause a leak and then a breakdown of the entire wall. I know when my UPS will no longer support the operation of equipment during a power outage, it's time to replace the battery or replace the entire unit. Unfortunately, the cost of a battery is close to the cost of just getting a new unit. Replacing the unit might be better as the new one offer more capabilities. I'm just unclear about the surge protectors.

Surge protectors have a light that comes on to indicate when they are no longer able to function (ie. the varistor has blown).

 

[ed3player]

I am an electronics engineer and have designed surge protector power strips. Most important is that a three modes of the AC line must have protection: Hot to Neutral, Hot to Ground and Neutral to ground. The component that functions as the surge protector is the MOV (metal oxide varistor) and the power strip must contain three of them. MOVs are rated by the voltage that will make them function and Joules (the amount of voltage surge energy that they can handle). When and MOV receives a large enough energy it will fail and becomes a short circuit causing the strip circuit breaker to trip. If the strip circuit breaker trips it is time to replace the strip. Do not buy or use a surge protector power strip that does not have a circuit breaker. If a MOV receives a power surge that does not cause it to fail its surge protection ability will be reduced. If you live in and area such and south eastern portion of the US that gets a lot of thunder storms you should consider replacing you surge protector power strips every year.