Hey Joe – I’ve been doing that for about 8 years and nothing bad has happened so far. I have all kinds of stuff plugged into my power strip, and I just turn everything off or on at once. My Blackstar tube amp user manuel said that failure to follow the proper shutdown sequence would shorten the life of the tubes. Oh well…..

As Steve said, it won’t do any harm, it’s basically the same thing as using the amp’s power switch

The only caveat that I would throw out there is if your amp has a standby switch. You will find videos that have conflicting info and opinions about the Standby switch

The video below shows that its best to use the Standby Switch on an amp that has a tube rectifier; on one with a solid state rectifier, there is virtually no difference as far as the initial spike of current going to the tubes
Personal thoughts, running an amp in Standby for a minute or so, allows the tubes to get warmed to operating temps prior to throwing the additional current needed when playing hard.

I may be wrong but with the current price of tubes due to the ongoing conflict in Eastern Europe, I’ll err on the side of caution and use the Standby function if my amp has one

Keith
aka GnLguy

I’m no electrician but I’d need to see the wiring diagram for the amp before opining whether it was OK or not personally. Safest would be to turn the amp off as it was designed and that is what I would recommend.

Remember that the supply power cable remains energized when you turn off the amp’s switch, and the same goes for any other mains appliance, for example a toaster after the toast pops.

If you switch it off hard, upstream from the appliance’s switch, unless you know for sure that the appliance’s switch is the first and only source of power into the depths of the appliance, in this case the preamp and power amp, you’re pretty much rolling the dice unless it’s explicitly OK’d in the manual. In other words you may be operating outside the intentions of the circuit designer.

Of course you’re probably gonna be OK but you’re not guaranteed to be. The fact that you’re asking the question indicates that you sense it may not be wise. My mama, and Mississippi John Hurt’s “Sliding Delta” recording, always told me to “listen to my second mind” 😉

Hi, I was an electronic tech early in my career. When you have multiple devices plugged into a power strip you will get a power surge when you turn everything on at one time. So the answer is that the issue is: what do you have plugged in besides the amplifier. If they are small devices that don’t draw much current you should be fine. If they are large devices that draw over a couple of amps when you turn them on with the amp you may get a large power surge that can damage one of more devices. Not highly likely but could happen especially if you are exceeding or coming close to the total amperage of the wall plug which is typically 15 to 20 amps depending on how your house is wired.

In terms of turning off the switch on your amp then all power to amp circuitry should be off. The caveat is that some manufacturers play around with wanting to leave a light on to indicate it is off so they bypass the main switch and power that part of the circuity separately.

If I was concerned I would put a separate power strip on for just the amp. That way you will be safe. In the US we typically have very good stable power so you don’t need a power conditioning strip. Those things always were a rip off. The main thing that can damage our equipment is a lightning strike at the power line…and nothing but nothing will stop that except unplugging the device because lightning is powerful enough to jump across a turned off switch. Yikes, I know but true. Thankfully lightning does not strike electrical very often but I’ve had it happen once in 70 years.

I concur with what Mr Larry posted above.
—————————————————–
To explain a bit about the power input of your amp, as most already know, input voltage for an amp is wired 2 ways: 1) with a removable AC power cord and 2) non-removable power cord.
What I’ll describe is for USA versions of amps; amps used in Europe & other place will typically use 220vac and the power cords are different although internally, they will be wired in a similar manner

On an amp with a removable power cord, they use the same type of power cord used by a PC, the connector on the back side of the amp has 2 wires that goes directly to the power switch, no other components are energized until that power switch is turned on.
On an amp with a non-removable power cord, known as being hard wired, 2 of the 3 wires are connected directly to the power switch

The 3rd wire on both styles of power cords are connected to the chassis to provide a safety ground. The older amps with 2 prong power cords were hazardous because thru failures in the amp circuitry, the chassis could become energized or “hot” as it’s usually known and present a potentially fatal situation.
Filter caps in a tube amp can have 350v DC or more stored in those caps and that voltage can be present on the chassis if the right situation happens. Adding the 3rd wire in a power cord and attaching it to ground provides protection because it should trip a breaker in the power box, especially if the outlet that it’s plugged into is protected by a ground fault receptacle (GFI)

So, turning your amp off with a power strip doesn’t remove any voltage from within the amp except for the power that is present at the 2 contacts on the power switch. No damage can occur to the amp by it not having power present on the power cord.

European models will be wired the same way except that the power cord is much different due to 220vac being used instead of 120vac.
I don’t know how European regulations may have changed over the years but one corporation that I worked for, we were required to add certain components on capacitors used in our power supplies, those components were for a double layer of safety protections – the EU may require similar on guitar amps as well. Can’t really say at this point.
What we added – yes it added a layer of protection but it wasn’t really necessary because other parts of the circuitry already protected the customer but someone somewhere thought, Let’s add a another requirement….

Hope this helps

Keith
aka GnLguy

What amp are we discussing exactly? A quick look at a circuit diagram could tell you a lot. Find the switch on the diagram, if the input power only goes to the switch you’re probably, but not guaranteed, to be OK switching it off upstream.

Don’t pull the plug from the outlet though, switch it off using the extension lead’s switch assuming it has one, many do not. I know for a fact that pulling the hardwired cable or extension lead from an outlet to my Deluxe Reverb makes a disconcertingly loud pop so I haven’t done it since the first time nearly 30 years ago. I haven’t blown a tube or anything in it yet, touch wood.

edit later, I reread your post, it seems like you’re yanking the plug from the power strip outlet. That is not a clean switch off IMO, you can get arcing if you fumble it. A two pole switch is relatively instantaneous.

Mark H wrote:

What amp are we discussing exactly? A quick look at a circuit diagram could tell you a lot. Find the switch on the diagram, if the input power only goes to the switch you’re probably, but not guaranteed, to be OK switching it off upstream.

Don’t pull the plug from the outlet though, switch it off using the extension lead’s switch assuming it has one, many do not. I know for a fact that pulling the hardwired cable or extension lead from an outlet to my Deluxe Reverb makes a disconcertingly loud pop so I haven’t done it since the first time nearly 30 years ago. I haven’t blown a tube or anything in it yet, touch wood.

edit later, I reread your post, it seems like you’re yanking the plug from the power strip outlet. That is not a clean switch off IMO, you can get arcing if you fumble it. A two pole switch is relatively instantaneous.

Mark
I’m not trying to be disrespectful or to start a debate but in my 20+ years in electronic repair, I’ve never seen an amp, whether tube amp or solid state, or any other electronic device that had AC power connected to a part of the circuit without having first been routed thru the power switch.
It’s just not done for safety reasons. Designers, manufacturers, etc don’t want a device to have uncontrolled AC power going to a part of their product
And in the US, I don’t know if a piece of equipment would be granted UL Approval for consumer use if there was unswitched AC power present

The only exception to this that I can think of was when tube guitar amps had 2 prong electric power cords, on some amps there was a capactior connected to a switch called a “ground switch” prior to the power switch in the circuit. If the amp had a hum when powered on, the user could switch between 2 settings 1) one setting connected that cap to ground from the line wire, known as the “hot” side and 2) the other position connected it to the neutral side. If the amp didn’t have the “ground switch”, the user would reverse the plug in the receptacle to attempt to kill the 60 cycle hum
This capacitor was known as the “death cap” because it was always energized and if a person wasn’t aware, they could get zapped with 120V AC although there are no deaths recorded from being shocked by this cap.
The common practice for a repair shop is to remove this cap when they replace the 2 prong power cord with a 3 prong for safety reasons.

Now, is there an esoteric piece of equipment out there that has unswitched AC power being used in part of its circuitry?
Sure it’s possible but it would be just that – esoteric…. few & very far between

Keith
aka GnLguy

Mark H wrote:

That’s OK GnL, no offense, and we will just have to agree to disagree. I would err on the safe side and just use the amp’s switch, as designed. Sure, it’s unlikely that anything is getting fed 120 AC current ahead of the switch. Any low voltage devices like LED / LCD displays would have gone through a transformer.

All I’m saying is that is what I would do, and that is all I have to say on the subject.

While I’m not a certified electrician I do know enough to have wired my own house, there was no power at all when we moved in. It was built by the Amish who don’t use electricity beyond the AAA batteries in their head lights for winter milking! 😊 I’ve wired the house and also our outbuildings consisting of a creamery and workshop.

The house is about half done. I get a real electrician to install main supply items like panels, sub panels and overhead stuff, they help me out with advice when I ask, nice guys.

And I agree about the power switch, I was answering the initial question “would it cause a problem if I would …” and while the answer is “No” most of us will use the power switch on the amp except on occasions

I’m sure wiring your house was quite a chore. My home in the Dayton area was built in 1926 and had the old cloth bound 2 conductor wires throughout – what a mess.
It had baseboard heat when we moved in and after installing a gas furnace, I removed the old wiring – there were several places that the wire nuts had either came off or loosened considerably to the point that there had been a substantial amount of arcing. The wires had places that were burnt and blackened. Amazing that house hadn’t burnt

Wow! Glad I didn’t have to deal with old wiring, I’ve watched some horror stories on youtube. Our house was built in 2007 with no power to the place at all, being Amish. First thing we did was get a 300 A service put in (we’re a farm, and I weld). So I’m becoming a world authority, in my own mind anyway, on ways of fishing wires through finished walls and other neat tricks.

Re. wire nuts, I hate them. I’m a Wago convert.