This Caught My Attention -- Furman's High-Performance AR-15 Voltage Regulator

This summer has been especially hard on electronic equipment in my day job area of radio. Our towers sometimes are struck by lightning between 80 - 100 times during any particular storm. We had another such storm today. In the radio business you account for those surges with proper grounding, phase monitoring, AC arrestors and other protection. We still have equipment that is damaged by lightning.

Unfortunately in churches not much thought is given to over current protection, lightning arresting and filtering. Many churches use a series of cheap, so-called surge protectors that are usually nothing more than outlet splitters. I cringe at the potential problems we have with not properly powering and protecting our equipment. Also the lack of filtering or proper grounding can sometimes lead to the dreaded hum in your sound system.

The problems that I see could be remedied by equipment such as Furman's High-Performance AR-15 Voltage Regulator. I currently use one voltage regulator in our main sanctuary but could use two more. We have no protection on sound systems in our other venues. That is why this new product caught my attention.

The first two paragraphs of product description had me wanting to try this product.

The 15 amp AR-15 II delivers a stable 120 volts of AC power to protect equipment from problems caused by AC line voltage irregularities such as sags, brownouts, or overvoltages - all of which can cause sensitive electronic equipment to malfunction or sustain damage. AR-15 II accepts any input voltage from 97V to 141V and transforms it to a constant 120V, ±5V. Voltages beyond that range may also be converted to usable levels, depending on the range variance.

Additionally, the AR-15 II is the only regulator that filters and purifies AC power, reducing line noise and ensuring optimum performance. Not only will your equipment perform better with FurmanÂ’s advanced filtering technology, but it will also be fully protected by our exclusive Series Multi-Stage Protection Plus circuitry (SMP+), which features Linear Filter Technology (LiFT) and Extreme Voltage Shutdown (EVS) with high current TVZ-MOV. This circuit provides the highest level of power protection available.

Sounds like it would work for me. Am I endorsing this product? No, I would never endorse a product that I have not used or at least tried. I just hope to elevate the thinking about an issue that is often overlooked in our sound systems. We invest a lot of money in mixers, amps, speakers and signal processing, etc. We should also make the same investment in protecting that equipment.

As always I'm open to recommendations, suggestions, tips and tricks.

Check out the rest of Furman's power products at Furman Sound Inc.