The K2B Show

The SurgeX SX1115RT, Protection You Can Count On!

We are SO excited!  TheK2BShow studios are located in NE Indiana and man, do we have a lot of lightning storms.  Every time one looms large on the horizon our hearts sink a little bit worrying about the multiple surges that are inevitable with thunderstorms.  We’ll never forget the time we had to replace the 46″ LED flat-panel TV because the ‘surge suppressor’ we had on it as well as the UPS we had in line failed and allowed a lightning-induced surge to flow freely into the TV, thereby frying it.  We never understood why that happened, until we found out about sacrificial MOVs.  Through Sweetwater, we have stumbled onto a new solution so we don’t have to worry anymore about all our great (and sometimes irreplaceable) sensitive electronic gear and computers and hard drives.

A new player to the musician’s market SurgeX^® is a company that makes superior power protection and also power sequencers.  The main point with these devices is that they are NON-sacrificial.  That is to say that the units do not ‘fry themselves’ to protect the gear downstream.  The SurgeX^® products take the power surges and, instead of using (like most of the other products in this category) self-sacrificing M.O.V.s (Metal Oxide Varistors) the SurgeX^® units literally absorb the surge into its patented circuitry, using “Series Mode” (in their words, they “block and contain” surges).  See more about the damage and problems of sacrificial (MOV) power protection on the SurgeX site by clicking here.

Series Mode^® protection is used in every SurgeX^® power protection product.  Also click here to read the white paper about Series Mode^® power protection used by SurgeX^®, written by Andy Benton, Director of Engineering at New Frontier Electronics, Inc.

The 'I've Already Got A Surge Suppressor In My Rack' solution SA15

If you are like us and already own several ‘power protector’ rack units for your live and studio racks, have no fear – you don’t have to sell, donate or throw them away.  Use them for power distros in your rack, downstream from one of these SA15 babies (or downstream from a SX1115).  The SA15 contains the same great non-sacrificial power protection as the SX1115 units and it’s in a form factor that mounts nicely in the bottom back or side of a rack.  Then all you do is plug in your former power protection (the MOVs in it may already already fried, but you don’t know it!) into the SA15, turning your existing unit from a potentially non-functional power protector into a power distributor that boasts complete and fully functional power protection that only SurgeX^® can provide!

SurgeX® feels so confident in their power protection that they have guaranteed each unit for 11 years!  ELEVEN YEARS!!!  (It says 10 years on their website and that will be updated and it does say 11 years in the manual that comes in the box.)

So Now For The Really Great Part!

TheK2BShow has acquired enough SurgeX^® to power protect all around the studios so we can test out the theory of non-sacrificial protection for ourselves!

We’ll be incorporating the SurgeX^® SX1115RT, SX1115, and SA15 into the studios, superceding the more traditional old-style MOV self-sacrificing devices that we had in place prior to our discovering SurgeX^®.  We’ll be doing a video shoot of the whole process and posting it here so you can see what’s involved and also the results, so check back for that.  Since we’ll be using the older pre-existing units as power distros, any audio filtering and AC-line cleanup that they provide will still be active.  Pretty slick, eh?  Since the existing units we have are using MOV sacrificial technology, we can’t really tell if they are providing good surge protection or not. Read more about how ordinary MOVs work (when they haven’t been sacrificed) by clicking here.

SurgeX^® is the leader in the industrial, commerical and residential power protection markets.  They provide protection for Warner Bros., MTV, Clair Brothers, NASA, Library of Congress, MGM Grand, Harvard, FBI, Carnegie Hall, United Airlines and on and on and on.  All the smart people are using SurgeX^® and are sleeping well!  :)  You owe it to your gear to check it out!   Click here to check out all the smart people using SurgeX^®.

The XF2 - a slim flat panel solution from the Residential line.

About the company – in 1995, SurgeX^® introduced the new type of surge protection technology called Series Mode^®,which blocked and contained surge energy without the use of any sacrificial or diversionary components and did not contaminate the safety ground. (See more in-depth info about Series Mode in the link above).  Improving upon the original technology, Advanced Series Mode with zero let-through technology was introduced in 2005. This, along with other proprietary technologies such as Impedance Tolerant^® EMI/RFI filtering, SurgeX ICE^®, and COUVS^® Catastrophic Over/Under Voltage Shutdown, differentiate SurgeX products from all other power conditioning products.  Click here to learn more about the company itself.

OK!  Now you know, now you CAN truly protect your gear from surges.  And only with SurgeX^®!

^{A word to the wise – If you are doing new or remodeling construction, commercial or residential, ask your contractor to install SurgeX at the infrastructure-level.  You’ll be glad you did!}

^{Also, they have provided a really cool (and well-needed) white paper on general studio electricity fundamentals and grounding, written by Jim Brown of Audio Systems Group, as well as a ton of other really useful articles and charts about power protection.  Here’s a listing of them, clickable. -}

^{SurgeX products are available at Sweetwater now!}