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[g'bye, Dick Rees]

I just bought a SURGEX. It suppose to be top of the line power protection. I hope so, I have Brand new Speakers, and board. Can not afford to take a chance.

And exactly WHICH Surgex might that be?

[Brian Charbobs]

And exactly WHICH Surgex might that be?

http://www.surgex.com/products/rackmount-product-line.html
SX-1115

[g'bye, Dick Rees]

http://www.surgex.com/products/rackmount-product-line.html
SX-1115

I'm afraid that's not what you really need and is priced WAY over the limited protection it affords.  There's only low/high current shutdown and NO...ZERO voltage regulation, so as long as your incoming current is within the operating range, whatever voltage coming in is what your gear will see.  If this is 130 volts, that's what your gear will see.  If it's 95 volts, likewise.

Do yourself a favor and hold out for voltage regulation at a minimum and an in-line UPS at the max.

It doesn't make any difference which car company made your 2-door sedan when what you need is a truck.

[TJ (Tom) Cornish]

I just bought a SURGEX. It suppose to be top of the line power protection. I hope so, I have Brand new Speakers, and board. Can not afford to take a chance.

Surgex is the best in the business for lightning and surge protection.  For a permanent install with stable voltage and expensive gear they are a good choice.  For live sound, they are probably more than you need, and may have trouble with tripping GFCIs.

I'm going to go on record against voltage regulators.  In some situations they can be helpful, but when they actually are engaging - i.e. voltage drops below 108V or whatever the set point is, they are trying to squeeze blood from a turnip.  Yes they bump the voltage up slightly, but this comes at the cost of increased current draw on the supply circuit, which puts even more voltage pressure on, making it more likely that any gear not also on a voltage regulator will fail.

Most gear these days have universal power supplies that can handle 100-250v.  If you are getting power hits below this, your power really isn't suitable, and IMO your best course of action is to either fix the venue power (find different circuits, ask the venue to call in an electrician to tighten things up, etc., ideally install dedicated power such as a NEMA 14-50R), fix your own power distribution (use 12-ga or larger extension cords, no crappy power strips, minimize cable length), or rent a generator.

I understand this may not always be possible at the lounge level, but where it is, a solid supply is worth the coordination effort.  If I had a choice between spending $1500 for a few voltage regulators to cover everything other than amps and lighting or spending $1500 on electricians to fix power at several venues I frequent, I'd rather do the latter.  Better yet, make the customer pay for it. 

If all else fails, adjust the level of the show to fit the resources available.

Coincidentally, our church had a brief couple second power outage about 10 minutes before the service started last night.  The PA (M7 at FOH) takes a couple minutes to reboot, but my keyboard gear takes about 5 minutes to reboot.  A voltage regulator wouldn't have helped.  A UPS on the console would have slightly reduced the time for the PA to come on (though the DSPs driving the system still have boot time), but unless we had UPS devices feeding the stage, downstream video, projection, and everywhere else, we would still have had an interruption. 

[Rory Maguire]

My current FOH consists of two racks, each with a "Power Conditioner" at the top. In the left rack is Pre-UPS and the right rack is Post-UPS. The most useful thing they do is provide power metering pre and post UPS funnily enough!

As well as obviously tidy, rack mounted 13a Power Distribution. But I trust the real "conditioning" to the online UPS running all my show critical equipment.

[Filipe Gomes]

It's not a gimmick. True story: reamp session recording guitars through an all tube amp. The place was a garage turn into studio with the electrical installation being very doubtful in reliability. During the session a power spike occurs,  several equipment transformers were burn but nothing connected to the power conditioner was damage including the pricey tube amp. The power conditioner was a furman lower spec model that I can't remember exactly which, but was enough. Sound wise,  I can't comment much since I only have experience with cheap power conditioners and those don't make a difference. Cheers

Enviado do meu HIGHWAY através de Tapatalk

[Mac Kerr]

It's not a gimmick.

Please go to your profile and change the "Name" field to your real first and last name as required by the posting rules displayed in the header at the top of the section, and in the Site Rules and Suggestions in the Forum Announcements section, and on the registration page when you registered.

Mac

[Filipe Gomes]

Sorry about that,  it's a tapatalk app thing,  I've changed using the browser. Let's see if it works through tapatalk.

Enviado do meu HIGHWAY através de Tapatalk

[Filipe Gomes]

It does.  Cheers

Enviado do meu HIGHWAY através de Tapatalk

[Scott Wagner]

It's not a gimmick. True story: reamp session recording guitars through an all tube amp. The place was a garage turn into studio with the electrical installation being very doubtful in reliability. During the session a power spike occurs,  several equipment transformers were burn but nothing connected to the power conditioner was damage including the pricey tube amp. The power conditioner was a furman lower spec model that I can't remember exactly which, but was enough. Sound wise,  I can't comment much since I only have experience with cheap power conditioners and those don't make a difference.

I've never heard of a power surge harming a tube amp. It's ICs you need to worry about.

[ProSoundWeb Community]