Powering My Volcas

Aaron Judson

If you have questions about this project, please email me.

This is just a little blog about how I chose to power my Korg Volca units, and the process which lead up to the final product.

I have in my cabinet: an Arturia Keystep keyboard/sequencer/arpegiator, a Dynasonic audio mixer, and foremost are the Volca Sample and the Volca FM synthesiser.

In the beginning I wanted to power all four devices with one power adaptor. I figured that I could do it by power splitting in parallel; but later on, by calculations showed that this is possible, but maybe a bit dangerous, so I decided that I would play safe and power only the Volcas.

A Volca should be powered with 9V DC power with at least 80 mA, or so I learned. Powering two of these (only 160 mA) with one adaptor would be very easy then with a current rating so low.

A couple of weeks later when I actually had the time to do it, I bought two 1.7 × 4.0 mm plugs, and a 2.1 × 5.5 mm socket. I already had the correct wires. Off I went and made my cable.

☝ This is the power supplier, just an old Pacific Telephones 9V 500 mA DC adaptor.

☝ The custom cable connects to the adaptor by the 2.1 × 5.5 mm socket.

☝ This cable connector is where the power is split in two. Since the circuit is parallel from this point, there is no loss of voltage along the way. The reason why I chose to use a connector instead of permanent solder is so that the polarities of the socket and plugs can be switched around at will—but of course I haven't found a reason to do this yet.

☝ Here's the final destination of the power-splitting cable: the Korg Volca units, maked by white tags. NB: the cable is normally more hidden than how you see it here.

All the units are here in this home-made cabinet. The cabinet is just made of junk radiata pine nailed and stuck together, basically, and the surface was burned with fire, sanded a little bit, and finished in three coats of polyurethane semigloss varnish.

Thanks for reading. ☺