Truetone - True 10 ($89 power supply)

[Anxiety Serum]

Instead of buying something cheap and planning on replacing it when it fails, just buy the quality product from the start. Why spend twice the price on an inferior product that is unreliable? Only a rich man buys cheap tools.

My only point was that if the only benefit is the $300 one MIGHT last 9 years instead of 3 years, I'd rather buy the $100. In the end it cost the same, but I can keep $200 of my money for longer. I've bought cheap TVs that lasted me 20 years (had an old Vizo die on me at 21 years old just last week) and had expensive ones that died at 5 years (An nexpensive LG from Costco that died 3 months after the warranty ended). I don't trust the longevity of any electronics past 5 years.

 

[The~Kid]

Thanks. I still don't understand the benefit of a built in IEC plug vs the wall wart. And when would a user want to step up to the higher priced Power Supply units? Assuming they don't care about the looks of powder coated.

Again, if this works as it has so far, is there any reason (reliablity, durabilty, anything) to spend $300 on my next power supply?

In my experience, it depends on what pedals you’re running, how and where.

When you start mixing analog & digital pedals, or finicky germanium based dirt boxes with anything, those cheaper power supplies can start having weird issues especially if you’re lugging them out to random venues.

This usually comes in the form of excess noise, but not the lower pitch hiss you can commonly get from drive pedals, it’s more of a high pitched whine. Sometimes it’s just enough to be slightly annoying, sometimes it’s almost as loud as the guitar signal.

I only use the cheaper one at home, and if it doesn’t get along with a certain chain of pedals, I just run something else instead. I’ve not taken it out & been hard enough on it to comment on how durable it is. It typically works well enough for running 3-4 simple analog pedals together.

The pricey Cioks power supplies I have are built like absolute tanks. I can Velcro them to the bottom of a board & be pretty confident they’ll survive anything. With them, I can also run anything in any order with zero noise issues.

If you’re out playing gigs, the IEC cables are a lot more solid & easy to run across stages than wall warts. That’s not an issue for everyone though.

Also you dont have to spend 300 bucks or whatever CIOKS DC7s cost like 240 and Voodoo Labs also has stuff around that price range.


Also a CIOKS 4 cost like 120 bucks or so new and you power multiple pedals by Daisy chaining them if they are analog with no noise floor added thanks to the multi stage filtering system and you can power them with a 9 volt adapter, USB, cellphone charger, pS5, powerbank, laptop/computer etc etc. Voodoo Labs x4 cost around the same too.

 

[Anxiety Serum]

If you’re out playing gigs, the IEC cables are a lot more solid & easy to run across stages than wall warts. That’s not an issue for everyone though.

That makes sense. I have another bigger pedal board that uses a True Tone CS11 (IEC cable).

 

[BeZo]

My only point was that if the only benefit is the $300 one MIGHT last 9 years instead of 3 years, I'd rather buy the $100. In the end it cost the same, but I can keep $200 of my money for longer. I've bought cheap TVs that lasted me 20 years (had an old Vizo die on me at 21 years old just last week) and had expensive ones that died at 5 years (An nexpensive LG from Costco that died 3 months after the warranty ended). I don't trust the longevity of any electronics past 5 years.

There are a lot of other benefits besides price. The Cioks is made in Poland and not China, is higher quality, uses better cables and connections, has more features, better power, less noise, and is expandable if your board grows. Add the reliability on top of that, and you spend less on the unit overall than you would replacing Chinese bullshit.

Look up "boot theory" the theory of socioeconomic unfairness. It's not just about gear, but life in general.