Korg Forums

Ok, so I have gigged all over The Netherlands for like 15 years now, and only twice before had a power failure (both due to sound limiting systems), in the past four months the power dropped four times!

Annoying enough to make me want to buy and lug around a UPS. Can I get some recommendations on what to look for and what to avoid? I would prefer something compact and not a thousand bucks. There's no need for it to supply power for anything more than my Kronos and it doesn't need to have a half hour battery, but 5 or perhaps 10 minutes would be nice.

use mine!! it's tough, and powerful, yet cheap and light in a compact case..

APC BR-CI500 AS

it'll cost about US$ 50... you cannot go wrong with this.. i had this one gig in a hotel, and the man who held the show rent us a room... it's a 4 star hotel, but with crappy electricity whose voltage goes up and down like a himalayan mountains.. plug my kronos into the APC, then safely play... the ups have to switch on battery mode couple of times because the voltage drop is too low (below 140 volts)..

trust me, it's good i own and have tried it with satisfaction.

I can't find that one, but it may be that the regional names differ. Is it this one?
http://www.apc.com/products/resource/in ... _watts=200
That's a lot more than 50 dollars, but about what I was expecting. I'm still wondering if it's enough though. I haven't actually checked how much power the Kronos uses. I would feel better if I knew for sure it could keep the Kronos running for five minutes.
Other option is this;
http://www.conrad.nl/ce/nl/product/9863 ... Detail=005
Which is obviously more expensive and seems bigger and heavier... but would definitely keep the Kronos running longer, plus the batteries are replaceable if they go limp in a few years.

Thoughts?

SanderXpander wrote:I'm still wondering if it's enough though. I haven't actually checked how much power the Kronos uses.

The Kronos has a power consumption of 60 Watt, so about the same as an average light bulb.

I second 1jordyzzz's thoughts about APC.

I use APC Backup ES 650 VA
http://www.apc.com/resource/include/tec ... sku=BE650G a slightly older version of the same model though. I bought it a year ago and it works like a charm. It provides 59mts backup and it provides power for Kronos 61 and the Laptop.

I strongly recommend any APC product for your use, available in your country. This excellent unit costed me less < 100$ USD (3300 Rs in India).

You may never need this option, but it has software integration through USB and you can even monitor incoming voltage, power incident history, configure when voltage drops to what level, you want the backup to kick in and a whole lot of jazzy features. It has built in AVR (automatic voltage Regulation) as well.

Hats off to APC for their good, feature rich and cost effective products!

ChrisP wrote:I second 1jordyzzz's thoughts about APC.

I use APC Backup ES 650 VA
http://www.apc.com/resource/include/tec ... sku=BE650G a slightly older version of the same model though. I bought it a year ago and it works like a charm. It provides 59mts backup and it provides power for Kronos 61 and the Laptop.

I strongly recommend any APC product for your use, available in your country. This excellent unit costed me less < 100$ USD (3300 Rs in India).

You may never need this option, but it has software integration through USB and you can even monitor incoming voltage, power incident history, configure when voltage drops to what level, you want the backup to kick in and a whole lot of jazzy features. It has built in AVR (automatic voltage Regulation) as well.

Hats off to APC for their good, feature rich and cost effective products!

+1, you cannot go wrong when going for APC's.. it's a solid brand with solid product quality and support..

SanderXpander wrote:I can't find that one, but it may be that the regional names differ. Is it this one?
http://www.apc.com/products/resource/in ... _watts=200
That's a lot more than 50 dollars, but about what I was expecting. I'm still wondering if it's enough though. I haven't actually checked how much power the Kronos uses. I would feel better if I knew for sure it could keep the Kronos running for five minutes.
Other option is this;
http://www.conrad.nl/ce/nl/product/9863 ... Detail=005
Which is obviously more expensive and seems bigger and heavier... but would definitely keep the Kronos running longer, plus the batteries are replaceable if they go limp in a few years.

Thoughts?

well it's not that, but it's this:
http://www.apc.com/resource/include/tec ... br500ci-as

dammit, i recognize from that site that the product is for ASEAN market only.. sorry man.. but try to look for APC's that's priced around 60 bucks..

http://www.mercateo.nl/p/915-E577022/AP ... omableiter

What about this one. Its compact and the lightest i found. And cheap. It has about 10 minutes back up tme. Dont have it at home, but thinking about buying one, also for giging in the Netherlands.

keekma wrote:http://www.mercateo.nl/p/915-E577022/AP ... omableiter

What about this one. Its compact and the lightest i found. And cheap. It has about 10 minutes back up tme. Dont have it at home, but thinking about buying one, also for giging in the Netherlands.

Had another link to a cheaper site. http://www.conrad.nl/ce/nl/product/9748 ... USV-325-VA

Thanks for the interesting links, the Conrad one seems interesting, and 60 is not that much.

Anytime you play in places where the power drops 4 or 5 times in a night...whao! I have both an Apc and a Cyber power ups. Gentlemen and Pepperpotty, the one with authoritah, it is not only the dropping of power that is potentially damaging but also when the power comes back on(surge).

I did a lengthy post on this. The ups's run from about $100-150 here. If my power were in the dropping out 4 or 5 times scenario, I would get an isolation transformer to put before the ups. Some say I am extreme. But, I keep my boards for a long time. I got my Korg T3 and 01w new and had them until about 3 years ago---never a problem, they looked new when I sold them. I baby my stuff. However, the Kronos/Oasys stuff is extremely more sensitive to bad electrical phenomena. After all, they are basically computers with a keyboards...and might I add, very expensive.

In summary, to pop a hundred or so for a ups is pretty cheap insurance. Now the only thing else you have to do is treat them with kid gloves when you move them from place to place.

keekma wrote:http://www.mercateo.nl/p/915-E577022/AP ... omableiter

What about this one. Its compact and the lightest i found. And cheap. It has about 10 minutes back up tme. Dont have it at home, but thinking about buying one, also for giging in the Netherlands.

is this thing has automatic voltage regulator?? cannot read dutch language.. if it has, bought it.. kronos uses only 60 watts, so i suppose it'll hold more than ten minutes..

1jordyzzz wrote:

keekma wrote:http://www.mercateo.nl/p/915-E577022/AP ... omableiter

What about this one. Its compact and the lightest i found. And cheap. It has about 10 minutes back up tme. Dont have it at home, but thinking about buying one, also for giging in the Netherlands.

is this thing has automatic voltage regulator?? cannot read dutch language.. if it has, bought it.. kronos uses only 60 watts, so i suppose it'll hold more than ten minutes..

It has 4 connectors with prefent from to much voltage and 2 with backup.
So I think its a good deal.

I use an APC BACK-UPS BE350G, which should give me about 13 min on power failure - more than enough.

Anyway, we played an outdoor gig on a generator last Saturday. The UPS beeps when it switches to battery power. It was beeping about every 30 sec for quite a while then finally beeped constantly for a while then shut down. Everything else on stage was working fine. I unplugged from the UPS and just ran direct to the power. The Kronos worked fine all night with no dropouts.

Upon reading the UPS manual, I found there are 3 settings for volgage sensitivity. If I'm reading the flashing LED correctly, it was on the medium setting, which should be good from 92VAC to 139VAC. I could switch it to low, which is 88VAC to 142VAC. I am skeptical that the voltage was outside the range of the "medium" setting and everything was working fine. I'm worried about the "low" setting. I could not find a specification for the Kronos as to it's acceptable voltage range.

Anyone?

LZ wrote:I use an APC BACK-UPS BE350G, which should give me about 13 min on power failure - more than enough.

Anyway, we played an outdoor gig on a generator last Saturday. The UPS beeps when it switches to battery power. It was beeping about every 30 sec for quite a while then finally beeped constantly for a while then shut down. Everything else on stage was working fine. I unplugged from the UPS and just ran direct to the power. The Kronos worked fine all night with no dropouts.

Upon reading the UPS manual, I found there are 3 settings for volgage sensitivity. If I'm reading the flashing LED correctly, it was on the medium setting, which should be good from 92VAC to 139VAC. I could switch it to low, which is 88VAC to 142VAC. I am skeptical that the voltage was outside the range of the "medium" setting and everything was working fine. I'm worried about the "low" setting. I could not find a specification for the Kronos as to it's acceptable voltage range.

Anyone?

well when gigging with generator i recommend that you at least use an automatic voltage regulator... outputs from generator are "wavy", i don't know how to describe it on english... it depends on the generator types as well..