road warriors and PS bricks

[hollywood_steve]

Like any location guy with more than a couple of gigs under my belt, I already carry a rack of power supply goodies: UPS backup, distribution, etc. And no matter how expensive your gear,you can not escape the occasional wall-wart. But I'm not talking about the main AC power supply / distribution nor the little wall warts used by some gear; I'm talking about those damn 'bricks' that are required to power many of the pieces of gear I absolutely must bring to location gigs.

These things are too big and heavy to velcro into the back of a rack, like many do with wall-warts. Some guys go to the time and expense to have these bricks rack mounted, but that really just makes them larger and heavier than they already were; just easier to carry. Between the bricks required for API rack gear, API module racks, and the occasional tube microphone, I carry at least four of these multi-pound bricks to every show.

Here's one of the darn things (and most do not have handles):

Has anyone come up with a briliant method of carrying these things around, or some bright way of integrating them into your otherwise well packaged mobile rig?

[fifthcircle]

How many of these do you have? How about putting multiple power supplies in a Pellican Case?

My tube pres have a half rack space power supply. I usually carry it in with the mic box (a Pellican case). The cables to the PS go in with the pres and the PS itself is seperate.

--Ben

[bishopthomas]

Something I have wanted to try but haven't had the chance: Get a rack shelf, drill holes in it, and bolt the gear from the chassis through. This will require opening your power supply and a little room to get a screwdriver or small pliers in.

[BLP]

Good question! I've actually decided against a purchase recently due to the all too large power supply...

Anyone else have a slick way to cart these bad boys?

[mpdonahue]

Years ago I built a system for my studio that contained a regulated 3.2Amp +/- 24vdc and +9vdc 8Amp supply that fit in a 2 U box. It has a total of 8 outputs on standard XLR-5F connectors with individual regulators for the specific devices that require different voltages. I power all my custom gear (24v) as well as my API (16v)and Benchmark(18v) racks.
I found that using this very stiff and well regulated supply along with some improved grounding lowered the noise floor on my mastering chain by a couple of dB.
I haven't gone as far as Bernie G and removed all the internal supplies from stuff, but in many cases I've modded devices that used AC wallwarts to use direct DC power instead. Again, my supply is many times cleaner and better regulated than all but the VERY best power supplies.

I also built something like this for a couple of custom racks of Benchmark AD converters many years ago that we hauled around along with a 3324 to record 18 tracks of 20 bit.
You could build something like this very easily now with a couple of good linear high power bi-polar supplies and a bunch of the JLM regulator boards all built into a single box. Not really rocket science, but requires GEP (good engineering practice) to make it work well.

All the best,
-mark

[Alex Specht]

Originally Posted by mpdonahue

a bunch of the JLM regulator boards all built into a single box.

Do you have more info on these Voltage regulators?

Also, have you tried to solder and PCB mount single voltage regulator chips to a 3rd party PSU?

[mpdonahue]

Take a look at JLM AUDIO they make all sorts of useful little kits and boards.
The biggest thing to remember is that all these regulators are going to generate heat and need to be properly heatsinked to the metal box so as to allow for proper cooling.
I did a quick BOM on the parts to do this and came up with $350 in parts to do it well, plus a fair amount of metal work to put it all together. The biggest parts are the box and power supplies. Everything else comes to about $100.
-mark