Today, I want to write about powering up your pedals and how I go about it.

Here’s the deal.

I love to power my pedals with a 9V battery. I’m not sure if it’s a superstitious thing or what, but the pedals sound nice and warm, tone wise, when I do that. It’s probably due to the fact when a battery de-charges a bit and run at less than 9V, you probably get a little warmer tone. Honestly, nothing to get crazy about. Just a little observation here.

When I run a couple of pedals for lessons or small workshops, I run them on a 9V. The batteries I like best are called Duracell ProCell and these batteries are for pro use. Don’t you love that that the consumer world gets marketed a completely different set of products than what the pros use? These ProCells are an industry standard for music, entertainment, broadcasting, medical use. This battery line last a long time and will not rapidly deplete on you. If you must have them, go on E-bay and you’ll find some sellers. They are equivalent of what Duracell sells as Coppertop to the public I heard.

The best bang for the buck on batteries are from Walgreens store brand. The store often has sales and their batteries are good. I sometimes wonder if there are just a couple battery manufacturers in the US and they just slap different labels on them. This happens with car oil and strings, believe it or not. Not D’addario as they have their own plant. Some other string manufacturers might as well but they are far and few in between.

In my real pedalboard where I run now a tuner, Maxon OD-9 Overdive, MXR Flanger, MXR Delay and Dunlop Q95 Wah I use a power supply brick. Several good ones on the market such as the one I have in the pic called Supa-Charger from BBE. I use that one in my studio to power up pedals. In my pedalboard I use a similar one, but from VooDoo Labs. You plug it into a regular outlet and you use several little cables to power up your pedals. No batteries needed and you always run on full power.

Playing live, I usually have a battery in the pedal anyways in case the power cable gets disconnected. That’s just a back-up move.

One smaller and very good way to power up the pedals is a Power-All system from Godlyke. It is a small unit and it comes with a ton of different plugs for your pedals including ones that are perfect for powering old-school pedals that only run on a 9V battery. It is very good and I often use this myself when I do not have enough batteries in stock.

Last but not least, I use a Multimeter tool to see how strong (well charged) my batteries are. This is good if you dig up a battery you don’t know how long it’s been sitting in your drawer, etc. This is a professional way to test the batteries before a show as well. Don’t use the tongue test – although we all do on occasion, lol. You can get one of these cool tools at Harbor Freight store for literally a few dollars. Good thing to have if you are a guitar player.

Last thought – I never run my Wah Wah pedal on a power supply – even if all of my other pedals use one. I always found that running a power supply to a Wah produces noise in the amp. I always run it on a battery. Good luck.