UK gear, Norwegian voltage...

[Guest]

1 minute ago, ben4343 said:

I tried originally on the adaptor (the brick was more of a last ditch alternative!). Mostly, it doesn't work, but occasionally fades in and then out, with the power light remaining on 🤷‍♂️

Interesting 🤔  There could be a fault with the adapter!  or even possibly the Amp. If I was closer I'd sort it. First job is to try a different adapter, then go from there

[ben4343]

Yeah, could be of course possible that the amp is dead... I am just hanging on to the chance that there is an obscure fix rather than the problem being simple but terminal!

 

Thanks all for the various input!

[Woodinblack]

21 minutes ago, ben4343 said:

But if it takes down to 100V fine, why does the amp then lack the minerals to output?

 

For entirely different reasons than the input voltage.

[BassmanPaul]

The UK was always 240V 50Hz all the time I lived there. 

[tauzero]

4 hours ago, ben4343 said:

Yeah, could be of course possible that the amp is dead... I am just hanging on to the chance that there is an obscure fix rather than the problem being simple but terminal!

 

Thanks all for the various input!

 

As you've got a UK adaptor, presumably you're using an extension that has a Norwegian plug (beautiful plumage) and a UK socket in order to get the power in in the first place. Is it possible that it's that that is dodgy?

[Mottlefeeder]

5 hours ago, ben4343 said:

But if it takes down to 100V fine, why does the amp then lack the minerals to output? I am still quite convinced the voltage here is lower (and some seem to agree 🤷‍♂️), and that this seems to negatively affect some gear.

 

Anyone else have a TU-3? I just looked on the back of mine out of interest; apparently I should be using totally different PAs for 230V and 240V... Seems like Markbass aren't the only ones to recommend specific PAs for kit in different voltage regions.

I'm fairly sure that there is a requirement that mains gear has to be supplied with a fitted plug suitable for the country in which it is sold. That might cause some companies to specify which model can be used in which country.

[Stub Mandrel]

The nominal UK voltage is 240 and the nominal European voltage is 220, but the tolerances are such that both can nominally be claimed to be 230.

 

In practice UK can be as higher than 250 or more, and Europe lower than 210.

 

This should have no impact on anything with a switch mode PSU, but unregulated transformer powered output stages may be noticeably less powerful in Europe as are kettles snd heaters.

 

Certainly these differences should not affect functionality.

[Chienmortbb]

On 03/05/2022 at 23:23, Mottlefeeder said:

EU harmonisation was a fudge. The UK voltage is 230v +10%-6% and the rest of the EU is 230v +6% -10%. So, we are harmonised but still operating at the voltages we had before.

David

Correct David. My mains voltage is close to 250 in Dorset and some amp modules don't like it. 253V is the upper limit and I had  240V module that did not always work. of course in Norway the mains could be down to 203V.

Edited July 10, 2022 by Chienmortbb

[itu]

I accidentally heard about Norwegian mains which is not very stable. This may be one reason you have issues.

[ben4343]

In case anyone is still interested... I took the amp (and PU) back to the UK and set it all up. Clicked it on, it sputtered a bit (capacitor related...?) and then purred into working absolutely fine.

 

So I suppose it lives in the UK now 😅

[agedhorse]

Any amp designed to IEC-60965 or 62368 in the EU must operate (and is tested by a nationally recognized test lab) at 230V +/-10%. That would be 253V high line and 207V low line.

 

If the amp needs certification to operate in regions with nominal 240V, this would include Australia and New Zealand), the national differences approvals would add a 264V high line test.

 

Virtually everything of any quality these days is designed to operate at a high line of 264V because it makes no sense to design multiple versions (at least with SMPS) because it would add more cost to the certification process than could be justified. 
 

The homogenization limits tolerances really do work quite well in practice, and in fact utilities have adjusted their generating and distribution voltages a few percent to improve compliance as well.

 

Australia has some additional challenges, primarily around voltage regulation on long transmission and distribution lines with varying loads in the Outback.