Quick question to those with larger studios: I’ve long heard daisy chaining power strips wasn’t a good idea. When you’ve got so many connectors as to almost necessitate that, what is the solution?
Also, as a kid I just used any ol’ power strip with a half hearted surge protector built in, but as an adult looking to focus on being a touch more professional, is there a quality tier to stay above? Different product all together?
Depends where you are — it’s less of a problem with 240v AC, because the higher voltage means lower amperage and thus much less cable heating, all less risk of fires. If you’re in 100/120V land though, yeah, best to take it seriously.
i’ve used these (not daisy chained) for years and they’ve always helped me out of a tight pinch. the cord is extremely long and you get an industrial grade strip w/ 12 spaced apart outlets.
2 of these going out from the left/right of your outlets gives you good flexibility.
Honestly, I’ve had no issues in 30~ years. Admittedly, I daisy chained like an insane person, but I’m trying to be more mindful of the oft overlooked fundamentals (and, admittedly, it’s my modular usage that got me thinking more about electricity in general in my studio).
I have a LOT of plugs, however. 2 for the speaker, maybe 6 related to modular, Hyrdrasynth, A4, Machinedrum, Digitakt, Octatrack, rack of compressors and fx (multiple there, at least 4~7), a few pedals, Waldorf MicroQ, Yamaha TX81z, and then the Model boxes (which sit on the side generally). That’s not even counting random other bits I might be forgetting, like recorders or synths I’m overlooking (Microbrute, yeah I own that too I’m now remembering). *edit: Oh yeah, I have a pro-1 in there too.
My current approach is to leave it all jumbled on a desk entirely unplugged, as my studio was broken down due to some ceiling work we were doing. If I tried to plug everything in, I believe I use close to 8+ power strips, which is insane.
p.s. In the room, there are two outlets, with 2 jacks each, so daisy chaining seems to be my only solution besides being more economically about what I have enabled at any one time.
Most music gear pulls very little current, so if you can get some 8-way or even 12-way strips, you should be able to plug most of it straight into the wall outlets, without needing to run one (or more!) strips plugged into another strip. Only having two outlets shouldn’t be a problem. I’m no electrician though, so hopefully one of the sparkies on here will correct me if I’m wrong about that.
For the pedals, you can probably run them all off one 9v adaptor with a daisy chain cable.
Doesn’t really answer your question, but my approach in a similar situation was to arrange things so that core gear always used was on one power strip, and then next most used on a second and so on.
So I could have everything plugged in, but I might just need to swap which power strip was plugged into the wall at any given time.
A rackmount power strip could be a good solution if you have a rack if compressors, but depending on the design you sometimes need to get a bunch of extension style kettle cords or short adapter leads so the wall plug that came with your gear can plug in.
At that point I would personally be starting to wonder how much it would be to get some extra power outlets put into the room. Probably more of course but worth thinking about if you’re planning to permanently setup in this room.
I’m not an expert in this stuff but I feel compelled to chime in because my grandfather devoted much of his life’s work to home electrical safety and preventing electrical fires.
So just a PSA to please take the necessary precautions with your gear and your house, make sure your outlets are working well, don’t plug too much into one strip, etc. etc. Shout out to my gramps and to all of you, let’s stay safe.
Problem is many pieces of gear have wall warts that turn those 12 into maybe 6, or less. If they all had sensible plugs, that would be ideal, but I get your point - I could at least minimize the insanity, even if I still need to do a bit of chaining.
So just a PSA to please take the necessary precautions with your gear and your house, make sure your outlets are working well, don’t plug too much into one strip, etc. etc. Shout out to my gramps and to all of you, let’s stay safe.
Thanks, and your advice is well received. These days I’m super paranoid, so tend to not only turn my gear off AND turn off the strips, but also unplug them from the wall when I know I’ll be away for a while. Probably overkill, but better than facing that 0.0001% possibility (though I suspect it’s higher).
Ugh, yeah wall warts screw things up. The short extensions bugula linked to would solve that, without increasing the total number of devices using each strip.
Depends on the length. I doubt the one footers are going to cause you any grief. They’re a godsend with wall warts.
A lot of gear (like guitar pedals) doesn’t use much electricity, but it really depends on the unit. I have a Neve EQ that is essentially a toaster, along with a 500 series rack that gets pretty darn hot too.
For guitar pedals they have power banks that run off of IEC connections for multiple pedals and one power outlet; they work great.
Choices can get limited depending on the situation - you don’t want to put too much stuff on one outlet but at the same time you could create a ground loop pretty easily by using different outlets. Knowledge is your friend, so you might want to talk to an electrician and get a pro’s advice.
do they each have six outlets? I’ve been using the one below for several years and really like it. well, I have like six actually… but at the very least, you’ll have less things to turn on/off if you go from six to ten input surge protectors.
also look into power sequencers. I’ve never done it but my understanding is you can plug all your surge protectors into those, set the sequence, then you hit one button to bring 'em all on one-by-one. from there, I think the main thing is to verify that you’re not trying to pull more than the power sequencer can handle. I would suggest chatting with a sales rep at a place like Sweetwater about it (or a similar place that sells them). they sell those to studios with way more gear worth way more money than all our studios put together, so they likely understand how to approach this problem.
the one I linked to above works well with most wall warts, as there’s extra space. but you can also get short extension cords to get around this issue:
The problem with chaining strips, if I understand correctly, is that you end up with 6 devices drawing current through one of the outlets on a strip. And those outlets are cheaper or lower quality than a wall outlet, and not designed to have a lot of current. But those extensions don’t give you more than one device out of each outlet, so that doesn’t happen.
there is an amount of resistance added with each connection and length / gauge of wire, lets be real though, those short ones will be pretty negligible especially with what most synths draw… but the same is going to be true of daisy chaining like one extra strip, like powering 30 synths is likely to be something like 900 watts which is half of what a good power strip is rated for… its probably reasonably safe if you are doing like 2 x 10 plugs if they are rated at 15A /1800 watts… the trouble mostly will come up when you forget what you were doing is bad practice and just add in like a new tower PC or a fan or something to the open plugs if you weren’t using them all.
*mastering/tube gear and some other stuff is gonna likely have higher power needs, so yeah if you are going to do stuff like chain them it would be in your best interest to do the math on what you wattage is and if you are 1/3 of the rating you are probably good.
I like the rack power strips because you are far less likely to just plug something random into them and instead they are for you likely 20-30 watt synths.
I installed some overvoltage protection and this got rid of my UPS devices, turns out whatever hospital grade “sine wave” power came at the cost of super-audible transformer noise. The things you get to find out blundering through a home studio
