Truetone 1 SPOT PRO CS12 12-output Isolated Guitar Pedal Power Supply

The 1 SPOT Pro Story

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 “A lot of people over the years had told us that we should make a power brick. Even some of my own staff urged me to do it, but I didn’t want to for two reasons. First, I knew the 1 SPOT could power just about every pedal out there, so I didn’t see the need. Second, I didn’t want to make just another knock-off of someone else’s power brick. If we were going to make one, we were going to do it our way and have features that nobody else could offer. As pedal designs changed and it became more common for digital pedals to require isolation and for others to need something other than 9Vdc, I finally saw a reason for us to design a power brick.”

“It took 3 years and lots of experimentation, but we were finally able to design a 1 SPOT Pro, using our own proprietary technology to give musicians all the features they need for today’s pedalboards. The original 1 SPOT still works great for most musicians, but for those who need more power and versatility, the 1 SPOT Pro fills the need perfectly.” – Bob Weil

1 SPOT Technology	1 SPOT Technology… what does that mean and why should you care? Technically, it’s switching power supply technology, which is very different than what anyone has ever put inside a power brick. Normally, you would find just a big transformer and a handful of small electronic components inside a power brick… old tech that hasn’t changed in decades and has a lot of limitations. Truetone took the same triple filtered switching power supply technology found in their famous 1 SPOT and scaled it up to make the 1 SPOT Pro models. With much more space to work with, they were able to completely eliminate noise, provide total electrical isolation between outputs, create multiple voltages, and still give you the ability to use it anywhere in the world. A major benefit of using a switching power supply is that it can handle far more current (power being pulled out of it) than any transformer-based power supply.

 

Multiple Voltages

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Because not all guitar pedals run off 9V power, the 1 SPOT Pro CS12 has outputs that can put out 9VDC, 12VDC or 18VDC. There’s even a variable voltage output for old-style fuzz pedals, and a 9VAC output for certain Line 6 and Digitech pedals. And if you need to change the voltage of an output, Truetone also makes inexpensive converter cables to help you.

 

Worldwide Input Voltage

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Just like with the original 1 SPOT, and your laptop power supply and phone charger, the 1 SPOT Pro uses switching power supply technology which allows you to use it anywhere in the world. The CS12 has an input voltage switch on the back, which switches voltage only for the 9VAC output, since that output does use a toroidal transformer. The rest of the outputs on the CS12 don’t care what the input voltage is.

 

Rugged Steel Housing

	If you’re a touring musician, or even if you just play at the local pub regularly, you know how important it is to have roadworthy gear. No worries with the 1 SPOT Pro. The housing is all steel, with cleverly designed vents that should keep out the accidental beer spill, should that ever happen.

Pure Isolation
Since pioneering the first switching power supply for musicians, the original 1 SPOT, Truetone has gained many years of experience in creating very low noise power for pedals. When they started designing the 1 SPOT Pro, the first multiple output switching power supply, they worried a lot about how to eliminate noise completely. Isolation is part of the solution to noise elimination, but not all of it. Each output is galvanically isolated from the other to help give you pure, clean, noise-free operation of your pedals. However, they also provided an additional layer of pure analog regulation, taking advantage of the greater ability of analog circuits to provide the highest possible suppression of in-band audio noise. There is an artistry involved in these designs, and it’s come at the price of decades of hard work. But all of this put together is called Pure Isolation.

Energy Efficient

Prior to the 1 SPOT, musicians either used one linear power supply (a.k.a. wall wart) per pedal, or used batteries. Both solutions for powering pedals were very inefficient with energy, with batteries also contributing greatly to the toxic waste stream. In 2000, Truetone pioneered the use of switching power supply technology to alleviate this condition in an economically-, energy- and environmentally-conservative way. The 1 SPOT power supply was designed to replace many such external power supplies and/or batteries simultaneously. It provided plenty of power with a very low noise level to successfully meet the needs of musicians. By offering musicians a solution that was more cost effective and energy efficient, and moving the market away from linear transformer-based power supplies to switching power supplies, Truetone has caused the saving of thousands of watt-hours per musician per year. Utilizing a more comprehensive switching power supply solution, the 1 SPOT Pro sets a new level of efficiency for power bricks, while still meeting the needs of musicians for low noise operation, even in severe conditions where the pedals themselves may generate interfering noise.