Guitar Gear

A power supply? I know, kind of mundane, but if you’re still using 9V batteries, you might want to rethink your power supply needs. Here’s a common situation: You’re in the middle of a set, and your beautifully clean tone starts getting kind of fuzzy. It’s not too bad at first, but worsens as the gig progresses. You look down at your effect pedals, and one pedal’s light seems to be a bit dimmer than it normally is. You realize the battery is going dead. So after the song, you go back to your gig bag to get another 9V. You’re shocked to find that you don’t have a spare!

That situation happened to me this past weekend. I recently added a couple of pedals to my chain, but because my 1-Spot only had 5 connectors, I had to use batteries in my new pedals. The batteries were only a couple of weeks old, so I thought I was safe. Was I ever wrong. I had to rewire my signal chain to bypass those pedals. It wasn’t so bad, but it was a pain in the ass because I was in the middle of a set. After this experience, I decided to look into getting a more robust power supply that could power all my pedals.

So why the DCB10? Simply because as far as power supplies are concerned, I think it’s the best one I’ve ever had! It has 7 9V connections, and 3 18V connections – plenty to power up most boards. What really excites me about this pedal are the 18V connections. I have a Fulltone OCD that can take 9V or 18V power. At 18V, the headroom on the pedal just soars! But I digress… In addition to all the connections, the unit doesn’t introduce any hum. My 1 Spot could get a little noisy, and was a bit of frustration point for me. But the brick makes my chain as quiet as can be. A lot of this has to do with the fact that in addition to being a power supply, the Brick is also a power regulator/conditioner, so you get a consistent current going to your pedals at all times. This also means that you have built-in surge protection, which could be fatal to your pedals.

The Brick is also built like a tank, with a heavy-duty metal casing, so it is definitely a road-worthy power supply. Finally, the Brick can be used with any power source, from 110 to 240 (you’ll have to get an adapter for 240), which means you could gig anywhere in the world and not have to worry about swapping out your pedal board’s power supply.

Price: $190 retail / $99 – $109 street

A note about pricing: If you look for this on EBay, make sure you figure the shipping costs into the total price you pay. A lot of EBay vendors list the Brick for $99, but charge $19.95 for shipping. I bought mine from a local shop for $109 flat. Caveat Emptor!