It’s been some time since I posted about Dotty, building a module or other things. After building lots of modules I thought I had some problems with my rack. Things didn’t feel right, a wobbling bass drum, compressor leds slowly blinking and some other stuff.
Well my feelings were right and it was all about power. So my time and efforts went it to solving this wobble.
I went for the cheaper option when building my eurorack cases. Bought some wood at the hardware store, rails from Clicks and Clocks and then some power supply’s on Ali. Did some woodworking a build myself a eurorack case.
These Ali PSU’s seem to function. But I found out you need to connect something to the 5v rail or else the other ones (12v and -12v) will wobble.
I just got a second hand oscilloscope. Don’t know much about using a oscilloscope (yet). But this doesn’t look OK to me when probing the 12v line.
All my modules are build with 5 volt regulator, the well know 7805’s. This means I wasn’t using my PSU 5 volt lines at all. Most of the times this wobble wasn’t noticeable except for a few modules. My TR606 bass drum was the one that really didn’t like the PSU’s. It was all over the place in terms of volume.
So it was time to invest some money on PSU’s. I found out these are a lot more expensive then the Ali’s ones, but a bit cheaper then I expected it to be. I bought them at Click and Clock (contact them for current prices) where I get my rails from. Linear power supply’s with 12v and -12v with just the specs I needed. I just place the 7805 on the bus-boards for future modules that need the 5 volt rail.
After a few hours with the new power supply’s I felt extremely happy with my money spend. The bass drum likes them too. No more wobbling. The PSU comes with connectors for clamping I thought was really nice. The only thing I wished it had was a drill template for mounting.
So if you can spear the money buy some good power supply’s for you rack. If you can’t afford it, cheap ones will get you a long way…