Johnson J-Station power supply polarity?

  • Thread starter Thread starter notCardio
  • Start date Start date
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notCardio

I walk the line
Say what you will, but I like my J-Station. It's tons of fun, and I've got a V-amp and POD also, but I much prefer the J.

My J died the other day. I don't think it's the power supply, but on the chance that it is, I'm going to try another generic multi-use ps. I can set the correct voltage, but I don't know if it's supposed to be center-positive, or center-negative.

Any help would be appreciated.
 
There's a ton of things you can do to confirm what is happening here. First, look over the adapter itself. I believe it is 9VAC, but if it was DC, there is always a little drawing with the polarity on the adapter and on the J Station. You could use a cheap $9 DMM to test the adapter. Next, if you feel comfortable, take the bottom off of the J Station, and you likely have a crack to the circuit board where the adapter plugs in. I've seen this a million times, and have had really good pedals given to me, even by so called music stores with a service department, for this very reason. 'It ain't worth fixin' so you can have it for parts!' I get that a lot. It happens from some over zealous pushing of the adapter plug.
Anyway, I believe it is 9VAC at maybe 1.5A or something like that. If all this fails, you have a parts donor. :(
Too bad. I don't like them myself, but this guy YouTube - Testando o Johnson J-Station gets a great tone from it, so maybe if you're clever you can make them work. It seems like a one trick pony, but what a trick.
 
Hey Bruce ...... how's it going?
I went and looked at my J-Station and it's 9vAC .... 1.3amps. Polarity doesn't matter when it's ac.
And if a different supply doesn't do it .... ranjam's exactly right about that being a possible cause.
I like a few sounds out of my J-Station. I use it for bass from time to time on recordings although I've gotten to where I just use a little Marshall practice POS more often.
But I also like the clean 'black-face' sound I get out of the J-Station. The distortions are pretty buzzy though.
 
Yeah, it's an AC charger alright-so polarity isn't an issue as Bob stated. I use mine constantly especially when I am working up the guitar parts for a new song-and lots of the parts end up as keepers on the mixdown. The Marshall and the Tweed are my 2 favorites on my J-Station, and you've got to love the knob layout on the unit.
The bass sims and cabinets are all keeper tracks as well.
I had the Line-6 Gearbox on my computer for a while, but got tired of the menus and the constant updates that played hell with my computer-it's now uninstalled and my J-Station is getting a heavy duty workout again!!

Hope you can revive it Bruce, best of luck with that.....
Tony
 
$30??? Horribly overpriced.

You can search amazon and get 9vac supplies for less than $10.
 
I replied to this once, but I got logged out before I was finished and it lost my post. I don't have the energy to type it all again.

I like several of the models, but I mostly wanted it for the bass amp sims, and primarily the 'Modern', or SWR sim.

I've got a snipe up on ebay for one, so we'll see what happens.

Thanks for the help.
 
Lt. Bob said:
for a power supply or a J-Station?
Click to expand...

J-Station. If it turns out to be the power supply, then I'll just end up with 2 J-Stations, which I wouldn't mind at all. I've got my little guitar setup upstairs, but my bass amp and cabs are in the basement, so I could just keep one at each place.
 
My snipes for a J-Station on ebay keep falling through. I've posted a wtb in the classifieds forum, but I thought I'd check here, too. Anybody got one they want to sell, cheap?
 
That's about the price range I was looking for. Yeah, looks pretty beat up. I don't understand how things get that torn up if you take reasonable care of them. I'll ask 'em about the power supply. It says you can potentially trade in other gear on it. That woiuld be cool, as I've got a cheap guitar that I'd be willing to let go of. Maybe.
 
notCardio said:
That's about the price range I was looking for. Yeah, looks pretty beat up. I don't understand how things get that torn up if you take reasonable care of them. I'll ask 'em about the power supply. It says you can potentially trade in other gear on it. That woiuld be cool, as I've got a cheap guitar that I'd be willing to let go of. Maybe.
Click to expand...

dude ...... call me up ...... I have a J-Station in awesomely new shape I'd let go for around that or trade for something.
 
Lt. Bob said:
dude ...... call me up ...... I have a J-Station in awesomely new shape I'd let go for around that or trade for something.
Click to expand...

You'll hear from me soon!

(Sorry, I can't do an even swap for the sitar.) :D
 
Turns out it was the power supply after all. I dug out my POD, and the ps was the same specs and connector, works like a charm. I still want to get a new ps for the Johnson. MF has one that will work for 20 bucks. I'm still considering getting another J-Station to keep in the basement with my bass rig, and as a backup. If anyone has the software and knows if it will run on XP, that would be great.

Thanks for all the help.
 
arcaxis said:
Here's the homepage for Johnson also....

Welcome to the Johnson Amplification Home Page
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've already been there, but thanks.

Hey, if you've got one, what's the preset that comes on when you turn it on? Since I bought it used from a shop, I'm trying to figure out if these presets are the factory ones or not. I swear that before the power supply started acting up, the presets were different. I'm assuming that it somehow wiped out the user presets and reverted to the factory settings, but I can't imagine that anybody would put that unit out with presets that sucked that bad. I think I'll just reset it to factory settings and see what happens. Then I'll have to spend a bunch of time trying to come up with some decent ones on my own, without the benefit of having it hooked to a computer. This sucks.
 
notCardio said:
Hey, if you've got one, what's the preset that comes on when you turn it on? Since I bought it used from a shop, I'm trying to figure out if these presets are the factory ones or not. I swear that before the power supply started acting up, the presets were different. I'm assuming that it somehow wiped out the user presets and reverted to the factory settings, but I can't imagine that anybody would put that unit out with presets that sucked that bad. I think I'll just reset it to factory settings and see what happens. Then I'll have to spend a bunch of time trying to come up with some decent ones on my own, without the benefit of having it hooked to a computer. This sucks.
Click to expand...

Oh ..... you mean having to use your ears and take a little time instead of just letting someone else do it for you?
:D

If you take some time you'll learn stuff ....... it'll be useful .......... really!




But I'll see what comes up when I turn mine on.

Also ...... I garuntee you that they'll send out stuff with awful presets .............. in fact, most of them are.
 
yeah, for got about that ...... the presets with the period after them aren't changeable so they should still be the same as always.
Only the user presets can be edited.
 
Love the J-Station. Have had one for 10 years and still use it all the time, especially for its great clean tones. Like that it's easy to tweak, too.
 
OK, apparently it's time for me to print out the whole manual and go through it, and stop wasting everyone's time until I figure out what it is exactly that I don't know (like how to change some of the effects parameters without using a pc, if that's possible). I didn't even realize that there were a second set of presets with the period after it. Mine always comes up on 01 (no period), which is J crunch with some godawful heavy reverb and delay. Can't imagine what that would be useful for. I don't know if the user presets were that way from the factory (aside from the factory presets) or if the guy before me did these on purpose. Maybe somebody accidentally saved them when they were screwing around. Anyway, neither one of these seems like what I had before, but maybe I'm missing something here.

Anyway, thanks for all the help, and I'm sure I'll be back with more questions on this topic soon.
 
factory presets are usually horrid as they overuse everything in a attempy to show the huge possibilities of their unit.

All you do is start changing amps ..... settings ......volume levels ...... effects ..... and when you have a sound you like press the 'store' button and it'll want to know which preset # you want it stored at ....... select a number and hit store again.
 
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