An important, and sometimes overlooked aspect of voltages, from Ian in Bahrain:
“Hi, just a quick note regarding a statement in inSync on voltages. For those readers outside the continental USA, there might be quite a few who use equipment standardised at 220v. Please don’t be so parochial to think that the world stops at the US borders. I’ve been a customer for almost 10 years now and love the service and the information. The web site has improved immeasurably, and the information offered is first rate.”
Yes, and we thank you! Let’s see, Bahrain… that’s somewhere off the Florida Keys, isn’t it?
I‘m joking, of course.
On voltages: There have been some wonderfully awful stories I’ve heard from years past about American bands their first time in Europe (and vice versa, although the former gives rise to a more immediately damaging situation). Long story short: a band decides to tour or record abroad, doesn’t realize that there’s a voltage difference, plugs in, turns on, and ZAP. Time to take a break. Modern equipment is usually built with the friendly 120v/220v selector switch, but sometimes even that gets overlooked. A power supply that’s expecting 120 volts and gets almost twice that instead isn’t likely to survive. But this is an eventuality that a fuse should prevent, and don’t worry, it will, but there is at least some potential for damage to the equipment. Let’s just hope no serious damage occurs…
On the other hand, the European band that comes to America, forgetting the voltage difference, is probably just going to find that the equipment (digital especially) simply fails to operate, or operates in a rather strange manner. Analog gear, particularly amplifiers, can reveal changing tonal properties when run at lower voltages. One easy example of this is running a guitar pedal on a dying battery. A waning voltage level or a voltage depression can be evidenced by changed tonal characteristics – one reason why that pedal sometimes “just sounds different today…” Another reason could be the battery type, incidentally. Using a carbon/zinc or manganese dioxide battery, as opposed to a standard alkaline battery, has also been known to produce subtle differences in tone character with guitar pedals (distortion pedals typically are the best for these types of experiments). But alkaline batteries tend to last the longest, which is why we like to use them.
Well, the battery tangent was neat, but getting back to voltages, I should also say that to run normal AC-powered equipment at lower voltages than the manufacturer specifies can ultimately cause damage to the equipment’s power supply. We don’t recommend or advocate such outlandish behavior! OK, it’s not really outlandish… Eddie Van Halen has been known to power his amplifier through a variac from time to time in an attempt to create unique guitar tones, but then, Mr. Van Halen probably has enough extra cash to quickly replace deceased power supplies!