Best PSU Solution for Multiple DIY gear

I have started (and plan to finish) the following DIY projects this fall / winter:

• 4x EZ1290 Mic Pres
• 2x Gyraf Calreq EQs
• 2x 1176 Rev. D Compressors

Here's my question:
Instead of building up multiple PSU's to power the gear listed above, would it be more advantageous to just build one really powerful PSU unit to power them all?

Seeing the 51x PSU project over at ClassicAPI.com has really peaked my interest on this. (http://classicapi.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=87_112&products_id=217)

For each of the projects listed above, I've already planned on mounting the PSU outside the enclosure to minimize interference. This just seems to make sense.

What say you?

On this instance, no.

What happens if you need one of the gears on a location?

Or if you wanted to sell it.

If something breaks down on the power supply or in any of the equipment the rest of the gear will be out of action during repair.

Mounting the transformer outside the case is fine but there is no reason for the power supply. In contrary you'll be creating extra work for nothing as you have to shield it.

I was having the exact same thoughts these days. Building a powerful PSU and daisy chain a lot of simple <24V devices on it (no tubes, though). But I thought of making a second PSU in the future for backup (to cover the repair issue that sahib states) and in case I wanted to take a unit on a location (though most of them never actually leave the studio). Building two PSUs is still less work / money if you power a lot of gear with it (not if you use expensive 2U rack cases, but you get the picture). The only real dealbreaker could be the selling issue. Though I haven't ever sold anything DIY, these things sound great and are always useful!

That said, I still haven't made the decision

Power supplies are just a fact of life. They are like having to fill your car up with gasoline(but don't nearly cost as much). Not something you really want to always build (tedious...) but the benefits definitely out way the cons.

If you build a regulated power supply outside the units, you have the advantage of having the power transformer outside of the case, (but when using a decent quality torrid that advantage isn't always apparent).

You are probably going to want some sort of smoothing caps inside the different pieces of equipment. And all the peices of equipment you mentioned don't even take the same voltage rails.

Calrec EQ +/- 15 to 18V (i'm guessing, its all opamps)
1176 +30/-10v
the EZ1290 is +24 (again I'm guessing)

So I imagine you are trying to save money and time, but really you might end up wishing you wired it up with power supply in each unit.

Example - what if you want to bring your 1176 out of your studio to run live sound or something? Or take it to a friends studio or  or or...

transformers can be found pretty cheap.... <20$ a piece if you look around. And they won't need to be as big as the one you would need to power all those different devices...

Also something you might have to take into account if wanting to use the same power supply is ground...
things might get a little sticky if you are sharing the same power ground and start hooking the different units into each-other....but then again maybe not. just depends how you do it.

Isn't that why most of these projects come in the 500 format? When you need to take it out of the studio, you take everything, or switch some modules to take whatever you need.

yes I want to get a diy 500 rack...cause building a new power supply for every little project does seem to get redundant

I've built all my mic preamps and 500 racks with the same connector so they can all share  51x PSUs. I think it is nice to have external psus for mic preamps and I like being able to swap psus.  The only danger is that I can put off building more psus. I have two now, with a third in the works, but my preamps need more power

I like to do internal psus for everything else that works at line level (compressors, eqs) .

Back in the day, many radio and tv stations had large dedicated power supplies with various voltages to run custom made gear which usually stayed in the racks.
And they always had two separate supplies for each voltage, in case one failed.
But there's not so much of that these days with everything going digital, computer based control surfaces and hard drive storage and play out systems.
But is was convenient not having to build separate supplies for each piece of custom built gear.