Description
The Juice Bar is an innovative approach to how you power your rig. The Juice Bar is NOT a power supply but rather a power distributor that offers you multiple choices of how you would like to power you rig. You can use a battery bank like those used for cell phones or you can use a typical wall wart 9v switching power supply like our Juice or a 1Spot. You can also use a typical iPhone/iPad charger or anything of the like, it does not have to be an Apple product just any mobile device 5V charger.
The outputs on the Juice Bar are not isolated which means they do not have power on each output but rather it has a global power source that powers all outputs. The benefit of isolated outputs is that if one channels fails you still have the other channels to draw from. With the Juice Bar, if your power source fails you will have no working channels. This sounds less advantageous but if you are using a linear supply like a Voodoo Labs power supply with isolated outs and one channel does fail you still need to figure out how to get power to the pedal(s) that were being powered by that failed channel. Sometimes a “Y” cable to share one jack is an option but you may be drawing too many mA’s from that isolated output. Isolated outputs are limited to how much power each output can supply ranging from 100mA to 500mA depending on the supply.
The mA tester is a very convenient option because it will visually let you know when you board is drawing more power than your power supply can handle. When a board draws too much power it tends to get noisy, pedals do not sound right because they are not getting enough mA’s for optimal performance. When you see that your tester shows green you are optimal, when it shows orange you are starting to push the limits of your supply and of course if it goes red you are drawing too much. This is a great feature to help you understand limits and to solve problems from power issues with less time trouble shooting.
