Harley Benton PowerPlant Junior

I have used this for a few years. Never had any problems, never buzzing, never hissing. The size is quite nice.

The build-quality is really good. The power-chord does not feel cheap. The metal-casing makes it really durable and strong. Nice rubber-feet at the bottom. Enough wires included: 5 x 60 cm / 5x 30 cm / 1 x Y / 1x daisy chain. Really sturdy and a quality product.

If you want this product with the same quality, reliability and features, but a different brand.. I bet its not possible under 80-90 euro.

The PowerPlant Junior seems to be a copy of the T-Rex Fuel Tank Junior, so that could be an option. (available at thomann) from what i read, the other power-supplies under 85 euro have less quality and more problems. (Don't buy Mooer or palmer... )

Really, with this build-quality and for this money, no body should complain about anything, it's perfect for the money but i wanted to be honest about that annoyed me a tiny bit:

When using this on a small pedalboard, the only small downside to this power-supply is the placement of the power-chord input. Many more expensive power-supplies from other brands have this problem too. I want to make people aware of it; design your pedalboard first on paper (or in your head) and figure where you want the power-supply to be. (if you don't care about looks, durability and usage; then this is not a problem for you, i know many people don't care.. haha. i though, want to have everything look tight/nice and wired and placed in a really efficient way)

The power-chord placement be solved by turning the powerplant 180 degrees, but then the 9v outputs could be facing towards the 'audience'. This makes it harder to change 9v outputs and a it's tiny bit less appealing/attractive on your pedalboard. Another option is to have the power-chord input facing you, but with smaller pedalboards this could result in bending the power-chord too much, this could result in internal power-chord-wire damage. (you don't want that when preforming on a stage)

Right now i am using a really small pedalboard with a TrueTone-1-Spot adapter because this saves me room on my house-made custom tiny pedal board. (space for 2-3 pedals) and also no noise what so ever.

If you get annoyed by the power-chord input placement, you should consider buying the Harley Benton PowerPlant ISO-5 Pro. This power-supply has a block with 9v inputs and connects to an Adapter. The adapter input is placed at the same face as the 9v inputs and the adapter-chord is not a struggle to run in/over your pedal board. Besides that, the Harley Benton PowerPlant ISO-5 Pro also looks beautiful with that brushed metal look.

The only reason i give this product 4 stars, is to make a point about designing your pedalboard first and after that buying the power-supply.

Conclusion: Harley Benton makes really good products and they all have their own purpose :-) design your pedalboard on paper / scratch first and decide what product works best for your pedalboard / usage. :-)

Несколько раз я пытался обмануть судьбу и купить дешевый не фонящий БП на местном радиорынке, затем на известном китайском сайте, стоит ли говорить, что деньги были выброшены на ветер ?!
Спасибо Thomann, мои поиски окончены.
И к данной модели -
Плюсы:
- полное отсутствие фонов и наводок
- комплект соединительных патчей (поистине огромный)
- стоимость
- размеры
Минусы:
- сетевой кабель вмонтирован в корпус, хотя это и мелочь...

This is supplied in a neat cardboard box. Inside lurks the Powerplant Junior, a bag of cables and manuals in English and German. The unit is a robust pedal-sized folded steel box held together with screws. It comes with a captive 135cm mains cable terminated in a Schuko mains plug. As I'm in the UK, Thomann supplied a Schuko to UK adapter with it free of charge. This adapter is robust and works very well. On plugging in, an LED shows the power is on. The unit hums very slightly acoustically, but this is not audible from a few feet away. The black foam feet on the base help with this aspect.

The five 9V DC ouputs are all tip negative, as most pedals require, and are ideal for powering a reasonable sized selection of pedals. Each output is isolated from each other, so this stops ground loops forming, which usually result in obnoxious hum.

A good selection of power cables are provided. There are two sets of standard DC cables (5 short and 5 long), terminated with barrel connectors (right angle at one end and straight at the other). Having both lengths make for neater wiring on a pedal board, without excess cable needing to be coiled up. A "Y" cable is supplied, for powering pedals that need more than 120mA of current. Lastly, a daisy chain cable is included so you can power more than 5 pedals. Some pedals suffer less with ground loops, and the daisy chain will work for those.

In use, my pedals are super clean and quiet with the PowerPlant Junior. It's a huge improvement over batteries, a daisy chain cable, or using multiple power supplies. 120mA per output seems fine for my pedals. It might struggle on some power hungry pedals but the current doubler cable is there for those situations. The standard 120mA output powered a digital delay of mine with no problems.

In conclusion, this is a great product at a bargain price. I should have bought one of these ages ago.

- it's a compact, rugged unit for compact setups
- works well & reliably
- good bang for the buck.
- not noisy (but see below)

I wanted to add my experience regarding noise issues that others have commented on. A few weeks ago I noticed a 50 or 100Hz hum coming out of my board. I isolated it to one pedal - a digital delay. So I disconnected the supply and powered the pedal from an external 9v monoblock battery.

Did the noise go away? heck no! The pedal went crazy booting on and off and giving out truly awful and loud digital sounds. So one might assume that the pedal was broken (some reviews of the pedal that I read afterwards indicated similar problems). The battery was putting out 9.03 volts unloaded. Not sure what it was when the pedal loaded it (assumed pedal consumption is 200 mA). However I changed the battery for a fresh one (9.3 volts?), and hey presto - all working fine again; no noises and no hum. So the pedal's not broken but it does seem to be very sensitive to supply voltage.

So I repower the pedal from the Power Plant Junior - there's that hum again. Now I change the output port that I'm using on the supply. There's one port where there's no hum, for 10 seconds. Repeatedly. So not all the outputs are created equal? And then I find one where there is no hum at all. Ever. Bingo - the pedal's not broken and nor is the supply. By the way all other pedals that I'm powering from the supply exhibit NO noise problems at all, hum or otherwise.

- So what are the take aways from all this?
I think that before accusing the Power Plant Junior of being noisy do some checks with port swapping. It may just be the combination of one output port and a voltage sensitive pedal (that also draws a fair bit of current) that is the problem. It may be that I have suffered from some degradation of the supply, or my delay pedal, with time but it also may not be.

So there we have it. Still a fine supply. If I need more ports in the future I'll go with the Gator 8. But until then count me happy.