I have a pedal board with a bunch of pedals on it that are powered by a common 9V power supply. Stupidly, I hooked up my Stereo Memory Man and POG2 to this common power supply instead of using their power adapters. The SMM and POG2 worked fine, but I made the mistake of unplugging one of the power plugs from another pedal and the outside of the plug (+) briefly touched the metal case of another pedal (-). This essentially created a direct connection between the positive and negative sides of the power supply…while the rest of my pedals were still attached to it! This did manage to fry one of my homebrewed pedals (I’ve done this before and it’s the 7660 power converter that seems to get destroyed).

Luckily, the Stereo Memory Man and POG2 seem to be fine (I think). I’ve put them both through their paces and there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong. However, I can’t help but worry. Are these circuits protected from stupid mistakes like this? Besides the homebrewed pedal, all of my other pedals seem fine, too, but none of them have the same type of digital circuitry that the SMM and POG2 have. Do I need to worry?