Boss PS question - ACI-120? (for Roland R-70 Drum Machine)

[Analogeezer]

I've got a Roland R-70 drum machine that came with a generic PS, when
I got it the thing didn't seem to work, so it went back to Roland for
a checkout and they fixed some things and said they tested it and it
was working fine.

I didn't bother sending them the generic PS, I figured they had one.

Only when I got it back it acted just the same.

The symptoms are a distortion in the audio, whether through the
outputs or headphones and the overall output seems to be weak.

In true Roland fashion, there are NO SPECS on the case, just "Use a
Boss
ACI-120 Power Supply".

When I got the unit fixed, I also got a manual for it...guess what, no
specs there either, only "use a Boss ACI-120 Power Supply".

So my questions are twofold:

1. What are the specs on this thing....volts/amps, etc.? One thing I
noticed is that it is used to power some fairly powerful things (like
a full sized keyboard) so I take it puts out more juice than your
garden variety wall-wart.

This would make sense given the problems I am having.

2. Anybody have an R-70? Do you HAVE to have this adaptor? Are there
other Roland adaptors that will work?

It seems the ACI-120 is in plentiful supply, but they are expensive,
$50 friggin dollars for a wall wart....but it might be that it's a
very high output wallwart. If I at least had the output specs that
would be a great help.

Thanks,

Analogeezer

[Mike Rivers]

In article > writes:

> In true Roland fashion, there are NO SPECS on the case, just "Use a
> Boss
> ACI-120 Power Supply".

Make the phone call. Don't ask "what are the specs of an ACI-120?" ask
what your R-70's power requirements are. Give them a story about how
your ACI-120 just died and you have to use your R-70 tonight and
wondered if you could substitute anything else.

Some gear uses an AC wall wart and a full wave rectifier inside to get
a bipolar power supply. Those won't work with a DC wall wart. What
does the "generic wall wart" that you got with it put out?

> It seems the ACI-120 is in plentiful supply, but they are expensive,
> $50 friggin dollars for a wall wart....but it might be that it's a
> very high output wallwart.

It's not unusual for "original equipment" wall warts to be fairly
expensive. But for what it's worth, I recently bought some 15V 1A wall
warts from Radio Shack that cost $22, but they have a very clean and
quiet output, unlike the $10 ones I tried that had about 300 mV of
ripple.

> If I at least had the output specs that > would be a great help.

It would be more useful to know the power requirements for the R-70.
It's rare that you'd need a lot of current if it doesn't have a power
amplifier. But it needs to be the right voltage. And distortion and
low output level could be indicitive of half of a bipolar operating
voltage missing.




--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

[Mike Rivers]

In article > writes:

> In true Roland fashion, there are NO SPECS on the case, just "Use a
> Boss
> ACI-120 Power Supply".

Make the phone call. Don't ask "what are the specs of an ACI-120?" ask
what your R-70's power requirements are. Give them a story about how
your ACI-120 just died and you have to use your R-70 tonight and
wondered if you could substitute anything else.

Some gear uses an AC wall wart and a full wave rectifier inside to get
a bipolar power supply. Those won't work with a DC wall wart. What
does the "generic wall wart" that you got with it put out?

> It seems the ACI-120 is in plentiful supply, but they are expensive,
> $50 friggin dollars for a wall wart....but it might be that it's a
> very high output wallwart.

It's not unusual for "original equipment" wall warts to be fairly
expensive. But for what it's worth, I recently bought some 15V 1A wall
warts from Radio Shack that cost $22, but they have a very clean and
quiet output, unlike the $10 ones I tried that had about 300 mV of
ripple.

> If I at least had the output specs that > would be a great help.

It would be more useful to know the power requirements for the R-70.
It's rare that you'd need a lot of current if it doesn't have a power
amplifier. But it needs to be the right voltage. And distortion and
low output level could be indicitive of half of a bipolar operating
voltage missing.




--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

[Analogeezer]

(Mike Rivers) wrote in message news:<znr1100560501k@trad>...
> In article > writes:
>
> > In true Roland fashion, there are NO SPECS on the case, just "Use a
> > Boss
> > ACI-120 Power Supply".
>
> Make the phone call. Don't ask "what are the specs of an ACI-120?" ask
> what your R-70's power requirements are. Give them a story about how
> your ACI-120 just died and you have to use your R-70 tonight and
> wondered if you could substitute anything else.
>
> Some gear uses an AC wall wart and a full wave rectifier inside to get
> a bipolar power supply. Those won't work with a DC wall wart. What
> does the "generic wall wart" that you got with it put out?
>
> > It seems the ACI-120 is in plentiful supply, but they are expensive,
> > $50 friggin dollars for a wall wart....but it might be that it's a
> > very high output wallwart.
>
> It's not unusual for "original equipment" wall warts to be fairly
> expensive. But for what it's worth, I recently bought some 15V 1A wall
> warts from Radio Shack that cost $22, but they have a very clean and
> quiet output, unlike the $10 ones I tried that had about 300 mV of
> ripple.
>
> > If I at least had the output specs that > would be a great help.
>
> It would be more useful to know the power requirements for the R-70.
> It's rare that you'd need a lot of current if it doesn't have a power
> amplifier. But it needs to be the right voltage. And distortion and
> low output level could be indicitive of half of a bipolar operating
> voltage missing.


Well I did wind up calling them, got through right away, Roland phone
tech support is much better these days I guess...they had the answer
but it's pretty stupid they don't just post the specs on the page
where they sell the things.

If you go to that page, they have literally FIFTEEN different
versions, all are somewhat different. They list which GEAR they are
for but nothing about the specs.

I guess that is their sutble way of making sure you buy their PS
instead of a Rat Shack one.

The ACI-120 is 1000 milliwatts (9 volts), kinda large for a wall
wart...the PS that came with the R-70 is a Rat Shack one, only 300
milliamps.

Turns out the ACI-120 powers some fairly large gear, like the XP-10
synth, the D-5 synth and the TD-8 drum module. These are not power
amps but they take a lot more current than a stomp box does.

Buried deep in the manual I finally did find a reference (but not on
the page that discusses the power supply), the power requirement is
600 milliwatts, so my 300 milliamp supply is providing about half of
what it really needs...could explain the slight distortion in the
output I suppose.

Anyway I'll check with Rat Shack if they have a 1000 milliwatt supply,
but I suspect these days they'd much rather sell me a Cell phone.

One thing I can say about Roland/Boss PS's....I've got several of
them, some around 20 years old and I've never had one go
bad...something I can't say about Rat Shack ones.

And people wonder why everybody hates wall warts.

Analogeezer

[Analogeezer]

(Mike Rivers) wrote in message news:<znr1100560501k@trad>...
> In article > writes:
>
> > In true Roland fashion, there are NO SPECS on the case, just "Use a
> > Boss
> > ACI-120 Power Supply".
>
> Make the phone call. Don't ask "what are the specs of an ACI-120?" ask
> what your R-70's power requirements are. Give them a story about how
> your ACI-120 just died and you have to use your R-70 tonight and
> wondered if you could substitute anything else.
>
> Some gear uses an AC wall wart and a full wave rectifier inside to get
> a bipolar power supply. Those won't work with a DC wall wart. What
> does the "generic wall wart" that you got with it put out?
>
> > It seems the ACI-120 is in plentiful supply, but they are expensive,
> > $50 friggin dollars for a wall wart....but it might be that it's a
> > very high output wallwart.
>
> It's not unusual for "original equipment" wall warts to be fairly
> expensive. But for what it's worth, I recently bought some 15V 1A wall
> warts from Radio Shack that cost $22, but they have a very clean and
> quiet output, unlike the $10 ones I tried that had about 300 mV of
> ripple.
>
> > If I at least had the output specs that > would be a great help.
>
> It would be more useful to know the power requirements for the R-70.
> It's rare that you'd need a lot of current if it doesn't have a power
> amplifier. But it needs to be the right voltage. And distortion and
> low output level could be indicitive of half of a bipolar operating
> voltage missing.


Well I did wind up calling them, got through right away, Roland phone
tech support is much better these days I guess...they had the answer
but it's pretty stupid they don't just post the specs on the page
where they sell the things.

If you go to that page, they have literally FIFTEEN different
versions, all are somewhat different. They list which GEAR they are
for but nothing about the specs.

I guess that is their sutble way of making sure you buy their PS
instead of a Rat Shack one.

The ACI-120 is 1000 milliwatts (9 volts), kinda large for a wall
wart...the PS that came with the R-70 is a Rat Shack one, only 300
milliamps.

Turns out the ACI-120 powers some fairly large gear, like the XP-10
synth, the D-5 synth and the TD-8 drum module. These are not power
amps but they take a lot more current than a stomp box does.

Buried deep in the manual I finally did find a reference (but not on
the page that discusses the power supply), the power requirement is
600 milliwatts, so my 300 milliamp supply is providing about half of
what it really needs...could explain the slight distortion in the
output I suppose.

Anyway I'll check with Rat Shack if they have a 1000 milliwatt supply,
but I suspect these days they'd much rather sell me a Cell phone.

One thing I can say about Roland/Boss PS's....I've got several of
them, some around 20 years old and I've never had one go
bad...something I can't say about Rat Shack ones.

And people wonder why everybody hates wall warts.

Analogeezer

[Mike Rivers]

In article > writes:

> The ACI-120 is 1000 milliwatts (9 volts), kinda large for a wall
> wart...the PS that came with the R-70 is a Rat Shack one, only 300
> milliamps.

Hmmmm . . . are you sure? 1000 milliwatts is 1 watt, which, at 9V is a
bit over 100 milliamps. If it's pretty big as you say, I'll bet it's
1000 milliamperes, or 1A, or 9W.

> Buried deep in the manual I finally did find a reference (but not on
> the page that discusses the power supply), the power requirement is
> 600 milliwatts, so my 300 milliamp supply is providing about half of
> what it really needs...could explain the slight distortion in the
> output I suppose.

Assuming that's 600 milliamperes, most likely the voltage is sagging
quite a bit, probably lower than the internal regulator wants. Got a
voltmeter so you can measure it under load?

> Anyway I'll check with Rat Shack if they have a 1000 milliwatt supply,
> but I suspect these days they'd much rather sell me a Cell phone.

I think you want 1000 milliampers, not milliwatts. Or did the specs in
the manual really say 600 milliwatts (which would be 67 ma at 9V)? If
they have more than one at that voltage and current rating, see if one
is both more expensive and lighter than the other. I'll bet that one
is a nice quiet low ripple switching power supply rather than a
transformer, diode and a capacitor in a case. The AC plug blades fold
which looks kind of crummy but doesn't seem to hurt anything.

Bring the drum machine along when you go to Radio Shack. Most of their
wall warts now come with a universal plug and they give you a free
adapter to fit the power socket on your device. There are a dozen or
more different sizes and that's one thing they seem to have all of
most of the time.

> And people wonder why everybody hates wall warts.

These days they're pretty much a necessary evil. At least now you can
get ones that make good power.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

[Mike Rivers]

In article > writes:

> The ACI-120 is 1000 milliwatts (9 volts), kinda large for a wall
> wart...the PS that came with the R-70 is a Rat Shack one, only 300
> milliamps.

Hmmmm . . . are you sure? 1000 milliwatts is 1 watt, which, at 9V is a
bit over 100 milliamps. If it's pretty big as you say, I'll bet it's
1000 milliamperes, or 1A, or 9W.

> Buried deep in the manual I finally did find a reference (but not on
> the page that discusses the power supply), the power requirement is
> 600 milliwatts, so my 300 milliamp supply is providing about half of
> what it really needs...could explain the slight distortion in the
> output I suppose.

Assuming that's 600 milliamperes, most likely the voltage is sagging
quite a bit, probably lower than the internal regulator wants. Got a
voltmeter so you can measure it under load?

> Anyway I'll check with Rat Shack if they have a 1000 milliwatt supply,
> but I suspect these days they'd much rather sell me a Cell phone.

I think you want 1000 milliampers, not milliwatts. Or did the specs in
the manual really say 600 milliwatts (which would be 67 ma at 9V)? If
they have more than one at that voltage and current rating, see if one
is both more expensive and lighter than the other. I'll bet that one
is a nice quiet low ripple switching power supply rather than a
transformer, diode and a capacitor in a case. The AC plug blades fold
which looks kind of crummy but doesn't seem to hurt anything.

Bring the drum machine along when you go to Radio Shack. Most of their
wall warts now come with a universal plug and they give you a free
adapter to fit the power socket on your device. There are a dozen or
more different sizes and that's one thing they seem to have all of
most of the time.

> And people wonder why everybody hates wall warts.

These days they're pretty much a necessary evil. At least now you can
get ones that make good power.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo