Baby's first rack cabinet



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Baby's first rack cabinet

Postby Thylacine Dream » Wed Jul 07, 2021 4:54 pm

Hi, Hopefully the pic works~

I've never used rackmounted gear before. Will this setup be okay as far as heat and power and everything goes? Am I safe plugging the 4 rack power conditioners into that strip on the bottom, or would that be too much for one outlet? Anything else I'm not thinking of?

Thanks for the help y'all :)
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Re: Baby's first rack cabinet

Postby Thylacine Dream » Wed Jul 07, 2021 5:04 pm

Okay I'm having no luck getting the pic up, any tips for that? I've done it before ugh
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Re: Baby's first rack cabinet

Postby crochambeau » Wed Jul 07, 2021 5:24 pm

This site will host pics as attachments if they're small enough. I typically just slap images on imgur and then grab the bbcode version of shareable link though.

Thylacine Dream wrote:Am I safe plugging the 4 rack power conditioners into that strip on the bottom, or would that be too much for one outlet?


Are you talking about four separate rack mountable "power strips"? If so, that's a lot of outlets.

Whether or not you are overloading any link in the chain depends upon how much current the end devices consume. If you have a lot of units that just sip power you might be okay fanning out (what I ASSume to be) a 15 amp mains circuit. There are limits, however, and it's sort of up to you to determine if you're in a safe region. You can buy a watt meter if you don't want to math it all out.

I tend to plug heavy pull devices like power amps, or mission critical devices like recording apparatus direct into the wall.

Now let's see that rack! :animal:
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Re: Baby's first rack cabinet

Postby Thylacine Dream » Wed Jul 14, 2021 11:36 am

I finally managed to make a tiny picture on my desktop!

SO

What you're seeing, left-to-right and top-to-bottom, is space at top->2 X Alesis Microverb II reverbs->4 X ART TubeMP tube preamps->Furman 9 outlet strip (top screws only to allow sandwiching of unmounted tapedeck)->Tapedeck->M-Audio Octane solid state preamp->identical Furman strip->space for power supplies to rest on->2 X Furman strips; and lastly, on the floor, a Furman 6 outlet non-rack power strip

SO

I had guessed that plugging everything into the rack strips, plugged into the floor strip, and that into a single outlet, might be problematic. But if each of the 4 rack strips got its own outlet in the wall, would I be able to safely plug everything in the rack into them, as well as keys, amps, pedalboards, etc.? And is the current rack configuration safe insofar as its elements' proximity to one another, or is overheating a big risk?
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Re: Baby's first rack cabinet

Postby crochambeau » Wed Jul 14, 2021 8:37 pm

I'd be comfortable running all of that off a single outlet/branch circuit.

Nothing jumps out at me as being a power hungry space heater, and you've got an open back, so unless anything is uncomfortably warm I wouldn't worry too much. That said, I would want to reach over and give those tube MPs a pat after they've been in use for a while to confirm that they are comfortable to the touch.
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Re: Baby's first rack cabinet

Postby Thylacine Dream » Thu Jul 15, 2021 8:13 pm

crochambeau wrote:I'd be comfortable running all of that off a single outlet/branch circuit.

Nothing jumps out at me as being a power hungry space heater, and you've got an open back, so unless anything is uncomfortably warm I wouldn't worry too much. That said, I would want to reach over and give those tube MPs a pat after they've been in use for a while to confirm that they are comfortable to the touch.


I appreciate the reply! And you think it'd be okay with all the other stuff I mentioned too? Amps, keys, pedalboards, etc.

My amps are 500W class D bass solid state, two lil' 45W Quilter pedal-size numbers, and a 5W Epiphone Valve Jr.
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Re: Baby's first rack cabinet

Postby crochambeau » Thu Jul 15, 2021 8:30 pm

Thylacine Dream wrote:
crochambeau wrote:I'd be comfortable running all of that off a single outlet/branch circuit.

Nothing jumps out at me as being a power hungry space heater, and you've got an open back, so unless anything is uncomfortably warm I wouldn't worry too much. That said, I would want to reach over and give those tube MPs a pat after they've been in use for a while to confirm that they are comfortable to the touch.


I appreciate the reply! And you think it'd be okay with all the other stuff I mentioned too? Amps, keys, pedalboards, etc.

My amps are 500W class D bass solid state, two lil' 45W Quilter pedal-size numbers, and a 5W Epiphone Valve Jr.


Ah, I had no firm visibility on the amplifier aspect. Amps pull power. I advise getting a plug in watt meter (like a Kill A Watt) so you can insure you are not over drawing the branch circuit. This is not something I can do over the internet...

Also bear in mind that typical branch circuits (as fed by a single circuit breaker at the box), often feed multiple outlets, so it's a good idea to map out what outlets are "common" with one another and factor any loads hanging off of those as well, otherwise you might be giving your breaker a workout..
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Re: Baby's first rack cabinet

Postby Thylacine Dream » Thu Jul 22, 2021 4:49 pm

crochambeau wrote:Ah, I had no firm visibility on the amplifier aspect. Amps pull power. I advise getting a plug in watt meter (like a Kill A Watt) so you can insure you are not over drawing the branch circuit. This is not something I can do over the internet...

Also bear in mind that typical branch circuits (as fed by a single circuit breaker at the box), often feed multiple outlets, so it's a good idea to map out what outlets are "common" with one another and factor any loads hanging off of those as well, otherwise you might be giving your breaker a workout..


Thanks for yr guidance! I had no luck finding a Kill a Watt at Home Depot, might look at Ace or Harbor Freight
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Re: Baby's first rack cabinet

Postby Thylacine Dream » Wed Aug 18, 2021 5:28 pm

crochambeau wrote:Ah, I had no firm visibility on the amplifier aspect. Amps pull power. I advise getting a plug in watt meter (like a Kill A Watt) so you can insure you are not over drawing the branch circuit. This is not something I can do over the internet...

Also bear in mind that typical branch circuits (as fed by a single circuit breaker at the box), often feed multiple outlets, so it's a good idea to map out what outlets are "common" with one another and factor any loads hanging off of those as well, otherwise you might be giving your breaker a workout..


Picking up a Kill-A-Watt at Harbor Freight now! So I determine which outlets are common by looking in the box to confirm they're all on one breaker?

If, say, four outlets in a room are common, does that mean it doesn't matter if the same load is plugged into one or distributed across the four of them? Or is it still better to spread it around?
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Re: Baby's first rack cabinet

Postby crochambeau » Thu Aug 19, 2021 2:15 pm

Thylacine Dream wrote:So I determine which outlets are common by looking in the box to confirm they're all on one breaker?


I have yet to live in a place that has this listed well enough at the breaker.

Mapping things out can be a pain in the neck. Here's how I do it:

First, I map out the room(s) with respect to physical outlets. In MANY places this is not really required, but sometimes this can be incredibly helpful when troubleshooting stuff like ground loops/etc...

Okay, say you have three rooms with four walls each and one outlet on each wall. Draw this out, it does not have to be dimension accurate. Run over to you breaker box and turn one breaker in the area of interest off.

Now test each and every outlet to determine which ones no longer have power, also test lighting. Now you can mark the breaker number that you shut down next to each and every outlet and light that has turned off. That is a branch circuit, and that entire branch (often having outlets feeding multiple rooms) has a limit to how much current it will deliver before circuit protection kicks in and shuts you down.

This map is important, as I have enjoyed music rooms that happen to share outlets with the kitchen, and could shut down if I was being active while someone else was preparing food. Old houses often have nightmarish branch circuits.

Now, if you have a room that enjoys multiple branches, you can utilize more power at once than in a room with a single branch. I find that by myself this is pretty much a non-issue, but if this is a practice space with a full band, amps add up fast and a single branch can run into overload.

Thylacine Dream wrote:If, say, four outlets in a room are common, does that mean it doesn't matter if the same load is plugged into one or distributed across the four of them? Or is it still better to spread it around?


I do like to assume that each plug into outlet in a branch creates a little resistance, so it is better to have four power strips connecting to four different outlets rather than four power strips in a daisy chain hanging off of a single plug. Most of the time, assuming decent house wiring, the house circuit does not care. However, typical in wall circuits are designed to carry more robust loads than a power strip - which should be thought of as the weak link in the chain. So spreading those out in as evenly a manner as possible is encouraged.

I realize you've got a pretty centralized set up in your rack, so in that I would prefer to fan them out from say, a quad outlet, where each of your four power strips plugs into a wall. But with your current meter it should be easy to determine if you're pushing your luck with anything.

TL;DR, connect the biggest loads direct to wall whenever possible, and fan the smaller stuff out on power strips. Your ultimate measured load will determine how many branches you need to utilize when going all in.

Also, if you have two branches in the same room, and discover everything gets noisy when you're using them both I can provide remarks that might be helpful (I just don't want to load this post down even further).
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