In Search Of . . . 12-volt Adapter for Boss pedals

[Winston Psmith]

My bandmate recently gave me a MIT Boss OD-2 Turbo Overdrive - nice pedal, classic Boss OD sound, but it needs a 12-volt ACA adapter, if I want to run it independently.

 

I'm looking for recommendations for a 12-volt adapter that won't fry out my pedal, or set fire to my house. I see a lot of cheap-ass adapters on Amazon and other sites, but nothing that I have any confidence in. In one listing, the manufacturer's name and country of origin were greyed out on the product photo?!?

 

The ACA-series pedals will run off of a 9-volt battery, or in a daisy-chain with other 9-volt pedals, but as a stand-alone pedal, they've gotta have their 12 volts. I have 12-volt Outs on my Voodoo Lab 4X4 PS, but no 12-volt adapters.

 

Thoughts, suggestions, humorous asides gladly welcomed . . . Thanks, all!

 

[timwat]

For what it's worth, I'm now using two of these Belker universal DC adapters (link below) on my pedal board (for keyboards). I purchased them from Amazon, as I needed to power both my Radial Key Largo and EHX Lester K (15V center pin positive, 9v center pin negative, respectively), and have always found the power wart as the weak link. Moving to inline wart allows better cable management / less strain, so I went with these "selectable voltage" options. 

 

So far anecdotally, they have been problem free and they do their job. They come with several size "pins" to fit different jacks, and include a "pin reverse polarity" adapter.

 

Don't know if that helps your hesitancy, but for me so far so good.

 

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B015H0UPWU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[surfergirl]

Analogman.

https://buyanalogman.com/boss_ibanez_style_9V_or_12VDC_Power_Supply_p/boss-style-dc-power-supply.htm

[KuruPrionz]

1 hour ago, Winston Psmith said:

My bandmate recently gave me a MIT Boss OD-2 Turbo Overdrive - nice pedal, classic Boss OD sound, but it needs a 12-volt ACA adapter, if I want to run it independently.

 

I'm looking for recommendations for a 12-volt adapter that won't fry out my pedal, or set fire to my house. I see a lot of cheap-ass adapters on Amazon and other sites, but nothing that I have any confidence in. In one listing, the manufacturer's name and country of origin were greyed out on the product photo?!?

 

The ACA-series pedals will run off of a 9-volt battery, or in a daisy-chain with other 9-volt pedals, but as a stand-alone pedal, they've gotta have their 12 volts. I have 12-volt Outs on my Voodoo Lab 4X4 PS, but no 12-volt adapters.

 

Thoughts, suggestions, humorous asides gladly welcomed . . . Thanks, all!

 

Most power supplies are simply re-labelled and come from a few different factories. New ones can be spendy but used ones mostly work fine. 

 

I've had good luck purchasing power supplies at thrift stores for $3-$4 (they've gone up a bit!). 

I look for robust construction and available amperage (usually expressed as "ma", 1000 ma = 1 amps far as I know). Running pedals off power supplies that supply more than the needed amperage (sometimes quite a bit more) has never damaged any of my stuffs, so far. Might be worth a shot, not a bad thing to have spares. Be aware that every once in a while I have gotten a dead power supply that does doodley-squat. Most of them by far have been good. 

Reversing DC polarity is as easy as cutting the 2 power leads in half and swapping them over to each other - the one with the white stripe on it is positive and there should be a simple diagram on the power supply label to show whether the center hole or the sleeve is positive. 

[Werewolf by Night]

Some Boss pedal users employ an extremely simple and very easily reversible internal modification, consisting of a tiny jumper-wire being soldered between two points on the back of the Printed Circuit Board (and with no need of any components being removed), that will make your OD-2 perfectly compatible with standard PSA type 9v pin-negative power supplies.

The pedal actually runs of 9v, knocked down to that from the 12v ACA PS by a diode and a resistor, each quite tiny.

In the case of your OD-2, the two components and their locations on the PCB that are involved are almost certainly Diode D-1 and Resistor R-2; I'd be surprised if that wasn't the case.
 

 

[Winston Psmith]

Many thanks, everyone!

 

That Baker adapter @timwatsuggested might also help with some other old, oddball gear I have lying around. I'll definitely check those out. Otherwise, I think I'll go with AnalogMan's 12-volt adapter for my OD-2.

 

[Werewolf by Night]

13 minutes ago, Winston Psmith said:

Many thanks, everyone!

 

That Baker adapter @timwatsuggested might also help with some other old, oddball gear I have lying around. I'll definitely check those out. Otherwise, I think I'll go with AnalogMan's 12-volt adapter for my OD-2.

 

Cool. Though the weird thing about those 12v ACA Boss pedals, is that they all actually run on 9v... I'm not sure why Boss engineers did that, maybe it was to make use of some parts- power supplies?- and/or designs that were commonly available at the time? Maybe to make the PS a somewhat proprietary accessory purchase, maybe to prevent people from using just any old PS that might damage the pedal?

[Lokair]

I use three pedals like that on my pedal board I am using a voodoo pedal power plus to supply 12V, have to move some dip switches. If people need em I also have some where around 50 Motorola power supplies 12VDC out 300mA(small wall warts) brand new, if I remember correctly I have to reverse the polarity on the out put for pedals and I used a couple of them for years till I got a fully functional board built. I supply these as needed as replacements for industrial radios. I think I charge 10$ to the mill each. I will look into my supply locker next week and see how many I am sitting on and double check the out put, I will even put one on my scope to see how flat the DC is coming out. 

 

Lok