Tonefiend Forum

Ah, once again my rig spent a night teetering on the edge of disaster because of a faulty wall wart 9v adapter. I go through one of these a year, easily the weakest link in a rig picked for road-worthiness as well as tone. Why can't someone build a truly industrial-grade adapter? We all use 'em, why do they suck so hard?

They do indeed suck but they can lower the cost of electronics dramatically. If you are a manufacturer you can get power certifications like UL Listed just by buying a wall wart that is UL Listed rather than sending your device thru the Underwriter Laboratories certification process (which hella expensive). You can even buy them with your company name on them. It also saves having a power transformer inside you unit creating hum and noise in your device (if you look inside older cassette tape decks and cd players with transformer internal and they have a circular bolt-hole pattern that allows the xfrm to be mounted in a variety of orientations to reduce the hum). As for FX pedal not only do the suck but if you use a daisy chain adapter for multiple pedals it is wired backwards IMHO as the positive is on the barrel and yet all the metal cases and plugs are ground if the barrel touches a case ZAP. This can cause failure or even hiccups while playing.