Harley Benton PowerPlant

Ah Harley Benton, I'm finding a new addiction to their products. Reliable and to the point. I always have huge admiration for any company that can offer me an option that just works and this is another example of such a thing. The Harley Benton PowerPlant is a cheap and sound option for any musician that wants the constant ring of their chorus or BAWLLS of their octave. Over the past few gigs I've used with it I have only 2 problems with it.

1. It's to damn big
2. Renders my entire board useless when I plug my EHX Bass Balls in (However I think that is due to the old wiring of the pedal due to it being from the 70's).

The first point is basic but i feel is vaild. I have this mounted on my Gator pedal board which I know has it's own power supply purpously designed for the board but the price difference between the 2 boards obviously made me sway towards the HB. The size has it taking up 1/4 of my board which leaves little space to expand with new pedals which I do want to aquire. how can this be sorted? Well if you have a board like I do then if the supply was slimmed down a touch it would have fit comfortably at the back of my board which would have been ideal. I small change but can make a huge difference between 5 pedals and 7.

Finally the second point isn't really an issue by any means or a deal breaker but more of a warning that the HB PowerPlant might be incapable of correctly powering older pedals such as my EXH Bass Balls. So be mindful if you do order this if it will work.

In a nut shell the Harley Benton PowerPlant is another one of those little musical mircles that just works! It comes with a healthy suppy of power cables and a european kettle lead (Oh thats another point, Thomann should list an option for the product to come with a UK kettle lead instead of the standard European one). Be mindful when ordering if you mainly use older pedals. If you use modern EHX, Behringer and/or Boss you should be more than happy with this. I recommend this to any friends with a huge pedal board and loads of new pedals as for my friends with small boards and a taste for the vintage effects I say look else where. Even though this supply may work fine for Daft Punk it hasn't got a whole lotta love for Lepplin.

This is the best budget power supply on the market just now. I've been gigging with it for over a year now and it's never failed me. But, as with all non-isolated power supplies, you're going to get a certain amount of electrical hum when running all the power outputs together. If you want to cut out the hum, it's a fully isolated power supply and a massive jump in price.

Not such a problem for the live environment, where there's always going to be noise anyway, but you do tend to notice it in the recording studio.

I actually ran 2 pedals through the one output with this power supply and it still held up fine, so even though it's cheap, don't have any doubts about reliability, as this power supply can take it. It comes with both EU and UK kettle leads and in the event that it is accidentally overpowered, your pedals won't be affected. It is reasonably bulky but again, for the price you really can't complain, and for me it wasn't a problem as my power supply sits underneath my pedal board anyway, so the space wasn't an issue. Please be aware that one of the 12v outlets is AC rather than DC.

All in all, a great power supply for the price, and super reliable.

I was looking for a cheap power supply but still have enough outputs for all my pedals. At first i wanted all the outputs to be isolated since i had some noisy pedals but those kinds of power supplies are very expensive so i settled for this one.

I didnt really expect anything great from it but i was really surprised. the cables are really good (one end straight, one end 90°) and the power supply itself is actually very good. The noise even with all 9 of my pedals (3 are distortion) wasnt a whole lot, even with the volume turned up.

Build quality is really good here also. I can stand on it! For the price you?re not going to do much better than this