Mains AC killing power supplies?

[captainate]

Here's a weird one...

I recently moved from Oregon to Los Angeles. I'm a musician and audio engineer, so I have a lot of audio equipment I'm using in my apartment. In the last three months, I've heard clicking in my rackmount power strip (Furman PL-8C), my Apple power brick has died, and now a power supply in another rack unit seems to be failing.

I don't yet have enough evidence to confirm this suspicion, but I'm wondering if the mains supply (notoriously bad here in the city) could be negatively affecting my devices in some way. If this turns out to be more than an unfortunate coincidence, what could be causing these issues and how would I test to confirm the problem?

 

[JohnRoberts]

The obvious thing to test is voltage with a VOM.

It may be a coincidence as gear should be tolerant of a wide range of voltages. Some universal supplies will accept up to 265V.

JR

 

[mjrippe]

Or your Furman is failing and taking innocent victims with it...

 

[pucho812]

Power fluxes in L.A. often but not enough to kill power supplies. IF it did, I would be fixing them more often then I do, outside of the usual maintenance from age. From the sounds of things you firman may have been causing problems.