Aussie pedal magicians M.I. Audio are doing what all good inventors do: they’re designing a product you didn’t know you needed. The company is developing a super-tiny power supply box, apparently the size of an MXR pedal. Now there have been a few tiny juice boxes released by other manufacturers, but to my knowledge none of them have individual isolated outputs (hell, a lot of larger boxes don’t even have isolated outputs, like Dunlop’s Brick and some of the T-Rex units). The advantage of isolated outputs is that there’s a drastically reduced chance of hum and noise.
So M.I. Audio saw an opportunity’s door and are kicking it down. The only downside is that the as-yet-unnamed box will use a Boss-style wall wart instead of an IEC cable (the same cable that plugs into the average PC, which most larger power supplies use) so you’ll often need to use an extension cord. But this limitation is likely necessitated by the small size of the power supply’s enclosure. It sounds like a fair trade. This won’t be the power supply for everyone, but for those who want the most compact pedalboard possible, like those who need to bring a board on a plane as a carry-on (and by the way for that crowd the wall wart means you can use 120v or 230v plug), this may be the magic lightning box for you.
It’s still in the prototype phase (as you can obviously see in the picture above), but maybe M.I. Audio will have something closer to a final version at NAMM this January.
