I’ll preface this question with something I discovered when I tried to power up an old BOSS PH-1 phaser pedal I had. The PH-1 is specced to use either a 9 volt battery or a 9 vdc adapter. I had tried a relatively new 9 volt ‘regulated’ adapter I have and it would not power up the PH-1, but installing a 9 volt battery worked fine. I thought the pedal somehow had an issue with the adapter supply circuitry and I set about troubleshooting it. Where I had expected to see 9v on the circuit board when powered with the adapter, I was only seeing about 5.7v. The same test points using the battery yielded 9v. I found a schematic for the PH-1 and found that the PH-1 circuitry for the adapter included a diode and resistor in series with the adapter circuit. The diode was to prevent damage to the pedal if a incorrect polarity adapter was used and the resistor served to drop the voltage by way of a 9v zener diode. The new style 9v adapter was regulated at 9v output and the diode and resistor in the PH-1 dropped the voltage to the point the pedal wouldn’t function. I tried an old transformer style unregulated 9v adapter and the pedal worked as it should. This old style 9v adapter put out about 13.5v unloaded, so the voltage was adequate to power the pedal even with the diode/resistor voltage drop.
Which brings me to the question if these old style 9v adapters which can put out higher voltages are safe to use with the SS product line. I’m guessing that others like myself have a box full of old style adapters for old pedals and if it says 9vdc negative tip on it, we might think it would safe use in a pinch, but now I’m not so sure.
