What Is Your AC Line Voltage Coming In To Your Rig?

TSJMajesty

TSJMajesty

Fractal Fanatic
I'm just curious..., I've noticed in many rig pics, the AC voltage always seems to be higher than 120. Like I just saw one that was @ 125. Mine is always around 122.

Anyone know why that seems to be the norm?
 
Pretty sure they fluctuate based on household draw (is the dryer or A/C running?)
and also community draw if you share lines with other folks.

I am at 122-23 right now, and it will go up to 125-6 in the middle of the night, and
as low as 119-120 if there is a large draw on the local grid.
 
That higher voltage is why I have a draw down voltage regulator for my vintage amps,
Due to that 120+ modern voltage I take it down to 110 +/- 5% where voltage was when
those amps were designed and in production.
 
la noise said:
Pretty sure they fluctuate based on household draw (is the dryer or A/C running?)
Click to expand...
Well I'll be damned! Just did a quick experiment..., turned on all 4 electric stove burners and the A/C kicked on, and it dropped to 120.

So do the power companies purposely send us higher than 120, to account for usage?
 
I believe so. Prevents a "brown out" due to less than optimal voltage that can ruin
electrical equipmment as easily as over-voltage and spikes.
 
I have a dryer than runs on 220V and when I turn that damn thing on I am
immediately in 119-120V territory.

I can turn on a couple of tube amps and not even get down to 123V. Yay tubes!! :)
 
Yeah, didn't he first do it with a light dimmer switch, and blow out his whole house, or some shit?
And iirc, he was simply looking for a way to run his 100w Marshall at a lower volume.

I remember once taking apart some old electronics, and finding these big-ass, ceramic-like resistors. So I wired a couple up in series, and made my own attentuator. But they got super freaking hot, so I stopped before burning the house down. haha But my amp sounded killer!
 
So now I'm seeing something on my Furman PL Plus I've never seen in the ~25 years I've owned it:
Lately all the LED's have been lit, all the way to the last one, which is 128 volts. But now, they're blinking.
Have no idea where the manual is, but since they're green from 110-120, yellow @ 106, 108 & 122. 124, and red from 90-104 and 126-128, indicating green=good, yellow=meh, red=no beuno..., then blinking being some sort of warning...?

I suppose since it's summer, the pwr co is purposely dialing up the volts, but since it's only 71 degrees outside, and it's the wee hours of Sunday morning, the public consumption is light right now, thus the high volts...?

It just gave me pause, since I've never before seen the unit this high, or blink.
Anyone else seen this, or care to chime in? (I'm not concerned about the Axe, since it runs on such a wide range of volts, and I ain't running any vintage tube amps these days either.)
 
So I figured I'd see if this was something the power company would be interested in, so I called them, and within an hour they sent a tech out. I heard him pull up, so I went out and explained what I had been noticing, showed him where the meter was, I went back inside then left him to it. He was only here about 15 minutes, left, came back about a half hour later, did something at the meter, and was gone. Power was never interrupted, and now the Furman is reading 122 volts.
Interesting. Maybe he made some type of adjustment further down the line between the times he was here...? Dunno, but I feel better about the whole thing. Pretty damn quick response time too, and early on a Sunday morning.
 
123-124 right now. I have never seen it higher than 125-6 in the 5 years we have
lived here. Never gone lower than 119, and that is because I am pulling 220v and
running the dryer.

That's a quick response, @TSJMajesty . If it was something urgent you'd probably
still be waiting. :)
 
la noise said:
123-124 right now. I have never seen it higher than 125-6 in the 5 years we have
lived here. Never gone lower than 119, and that is because I am pulling 220v and
running the dryer.

That's a quick response, @TSJMajesty . If it was something urgent you'd probably
still be waiting. :)
Click to expand...
Yeah.
We have pretty good utility companies out here. A storm blew down a handful of huge Oak trees last summer, and they took down 2 of the real big lines you see way up on top of the poles, 3 wires, and it took them about 14 hours to get that dealt with. Both of those trees were right around where I live, so it was the direct cause. (I got tired of waiting with no power, so I went driving around, and found them.)
Other than that, we rarely even have outages.
Maybe they responded so fast because having too much power could be more of an issue for them than no power...? But yeah, that was surprising.
 
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