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Ok clueless question time. Is it a bad thing to plug your gear, that is all left in the on-position, into a single power strip (or series of strips) and turn everything on and off at once, with a single switch?
Or is it better to have everything off and turn each device on, one at a time?
Context: I never took electronics class - Oof!
@ology What you're worrying about here is "inrush current" - as each device starts up and does things like charge up its capacitors, it momentarily draws a much larger amount of power than it uses in normal operation.
My thoughts, as somebody who neither is an electrical engineer nor plays one on television:
- As long as it doesn't trip a circuit breaker, you're probably fine.
- It seems kinder and gentler to charge things up progressively.
- It seems very likely that this is less of an issue than it used to be, thanks to switch-mode power-supplies being much more common than the old-style ones, but I don't actually know for sure.
- The cumulative effect of many power-cycles could be something to worry about, if your gear draws enough current on startup. I base this on older PC power-supplies generally being the part that failed, and most often at about 9am on Monday morning.
Mainly, though, the first point seems like the crucial one.
Personally, I tend to give it a couple of seconds between each thing, where the entire pedalboard is a single 'thing" because it all runs off a Cioks PSU.
Thinking about the times I've actually known inrush current to trip a circuit-breaker, you should be fine to just switch it all on unless you have Chris Lord-Alge quantities of rackmount gear.
@KatS Thank you. That's what I've always done - turn things on progressively.
@KatS @ology Also have a CIOKS power supply for my board. I power that first and each pedal activates. The Strymon units (digital signal processing) seem to have a start up sequence that perhaps protects itself against a surge, while the analog units turn on only if their foot switches are not in bypass. So far no troubles with 7 pedals starting at once. But I always boot the pedalboard before powering my amps to avoid the aforementioned “thump” on their speakers.
@ology depending on the kind of gear it could wear out the power strip switch fast.
Every time you switch it on it will spark (unless you are in the low voltage portion of the sine wave)
Normally switches account for that spark, but deppening on how often do you switch it could last a few years.
@ology @NigelTufnel The two main instances where power switching “all at once” matters are in amplifiers into speakers, and some digital devices. The pop of an amp turning on can sometimes overpower a speaker, which can damage the cone. And some older digital gear has inadequate protection from inrush current, and can go into a fault state. It’s usually not broken though, and goes back to normal when you restart it.
@mjg Haha :)