surge/power conditioner

Killjingle · Post by **Killjingle** » Friday Feb 03, 2006

I was at GC in Monroeville last evening, and I was gonna purchase a Furman power conditioner. The guy talked me out of it telling me to step up to the Monster power conditioner version. What are most of you guys using? Im sure he was interested in selling me the most expensive thing, BUT he pointed me some other etc gear that was not as expensive as some etc gear I was already planning to purchase.

HBSPro · Post by **HBSPro** » Friday Feb 03, 2006

We currently have 4 power conditiones in our racks. 1 furman with 2 pull out lights it does not have the volt meter in it .

and 3 of the eta brand ones all with pull out lights.

so far no problem with them . the only one i have had a problem with so far was a juice goose power conditioner. took a while but figured out it was causeing a hum. in the system.

but if you have read any of the good bad and ugly post. you will see something there that deals with power. so if you purchase get the one with the meter in it . we will be upgradeing to one of those to help monitor power at the mix position.

nighthawk · Post by **nighthawk** » Saturday Feb 04, 2006

i go for the furman ar-15 power regulator. or something simmilar.

im not much for the power conditioners. about all they do is protect against surges. the power regulator takes the power in and maintains a constant 120 volts +- a few volts. pluss the surge protection. if you run a lot of digital equipment it is possible to have complete shutdown of your gear if the voltage gets to low. happened to me once. they are a lot nicer but they cost about 4 times as much.

bassist_25 · Post by **bassist_25** » Saturday Feb 04, 2006

The Monster stuff is superior, even though the sales associate was probaly just trying to get a higher commission. I run a Furman Pl-8 in my rack. I really don't know how much it protects. It does do one thing that I really like: It eliminates a lot of the line-noise that can come through a buildings wiring or because of light dimmer packs being plugged in. The pull-out lights are really nice on dark stages.

lonewolf · Post by **lonewolf** » Saturday Feb 04, 2006

Most of the stuff around $150 and under is pretty much the same, give or take. They use MOVs and chip filters to do the job and they're not much better than a $15 6-way power strip...add $15 for a voltmeter. MOVs work OK, but have a limited life span, depending on how hard they get hit. I wouldn't buy a used PD8L or Rackrider.

I don't know about Monster, but the higher end ETA and Furman stuff use the MOVs and filters PLUS they add gas discharge tubes to provide better and longer lasting protection.