2:52
Voltage switches - leave them alone
On YouTube this video is called Should you mess about with 110-120v /220-240v settings?
What this lesson teaches
Three minutes on one switch, and the lesson is that it is not a feature.
What it is
On the back of powered monitors, turntables and a great deal of other equipment there is a small switch marked 110-120 and 220-240.
It tells the power supply which mains voltage to expect. The manufacturer set it for the country the unit was sold into.
The instruction
Do not touch it. Full stop. It has been set for your country; leave it alone.
What it does not do
He is specific, because these are the reasons people fiddle with it.
It will not make the unit sound better. It will not make your turntable run faster. It will not give you more volume, more power or more anything.
What it will do is stop the equipment working - and void the warranty, so you buy another one.
The physics is unforgiving in one direction in particular. A unit set to 110-120 and plugged into a 230-volt supply is receiving twice the voltage it is configured for, and what happens next is immediate and usually terminal.
The one legitimate reason
Which is why the switch exists at all: you are physically taking the equipment to a country on the other standard.
Set for a 230-volt country, travelling to a 120-volt one - then, and only then, you move the switch, because the appliance is about to meet a different supply.
And note his qualifier from the opening: this is about power taken directly from a wall socket, not through a converter. If you are already using a step-down transformer, the appliance is seeing its own voltage and the switch stays where it is.
The turntable too
He shows the same switch on a Technics and repeats it, because this is where the myth lives: a vinyl turntable's speed is set by its motor control and its pitch fader, not by the mains voltage selector.
Moving it will not make your turntable faster than the one next door. It will make it dead.
Why this short lesson matters
Because it is the cheapest piece of equipment advice there is. One switch, left alone, saves a power supply - and it is exactly the kind of unlabelled control that somebody helpful flips while they are "having a look at the back".
Contents of the video
Alright folks, in this video we're going to be talking about actual input power settings from your particular country. We're just going to be using these guys as a demonstration. They're powered monitors for the M-Series 606. Mainly we're going to be looking at power input. Now this applies to any particular appliance you have whereby you will have to have a power input directly from your wall socket, not from a power converter. It's quite important. Right, here's the deal. Let's have a close look at this particular area here. Make sure it focuses. OK, you can see here 110, 120 and 220, 240. Now, under no circumstances must you touch this area at all. Full stop, you do not touch it. Leave it alone because that has been set for your country. But, I'm not contradicting myself, here's the only one time you will ever mess around with that particular area there. Switch that from...
This setting over to that setting. Now let's say, for example, 220-240 is country A. In other words, it's somewhere around the world. And let's say 110-120 is country B. Okay? A different place around the world. So 220-240 country A, 110-120 is country B. Let's say we live in country A and this appliance has been set from the manufacturer for country A. We leave it. We don't touch it. Stay as it is. It's not going to change anything. It's not going to make it sound better by switching it over. If anything, it might stop it from working. You'll lose your warranty and you'll have to buy another one. Let's say though we want to have a nice plane journey and we want to go to Country B. So we also want to take this appliance with us. Now that is the only time you will switch that over is when you visit Country B because Country B
This is a vinyl turntable. There you go. It's a Technics turntable. And here we have exactly near enough the same thing, if I can keep the camera steady. Okay, there you go. We've got exactly the same thing. We have another switch. Now, for goodness sake, please understand, by moving this switch across, it will not make your vinyl turntable go faster. It won't make it sound better than the chat next door at all. One thing it will do though is it will stop it from working if you mess around with that. It's set for your country. Do not touch it. Practice and enjoy.
This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.
