I bought a Roland DC-50 off of a Japanese seller on ebay. It says it uses 100v 50-60Hz. Do I need to get an adapter for this before I can use it? I can’t find hardly any information on it anywhere and I really don’t want to damage it. I have heard some people say it should be okay and some say it will not be okay.
http://www.amazon.com/VCT-VT-500J-Japanese-Transformer-Converts/dp/B000PC4JL4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1380337259&sr=8-1&keywords=step+down+transformer+100v
… or something like it.
I can’t say you absolutely should or shouldn’t use a step-down transformer, but it would be a good idea.
The transformer inside the unit is seeing more power and thus putting out more power.
While the diodes and regulators might handle that extra power ok, the now vintage capacitors might not.
This is especially true if it was previously powered off 100V for many years.
I have some American stuff that claims to use 100V 60Hz…namely, a Proformance stereo amp from Sears, and a JCPenny 8 track player. They seem to work fine on 120V. If you bought the thing from Japan, though, I’d probably agree with Kevin on this one.
Congrats on the DC-50. I was lucky to get a UK one a number of years ago for £60, so have no power issues as it’s a UK version. It is quite a nuts box. One thing I haven’t done is open it up an see if there’s any preset pots worth tweaking. You can get a mad regen effect from the Hall setting without any input, just wind the Intensity knob up. I love units like this: you want chorus? Add more chorus with the knob. You want echo? Add echo with knob, adjust echo’s volume with the other knob. That’s it.
Btw, there’s no digital aspect to this device that I can make out, even though it claims to be a Digital Chorus.
“Digital”; maybe a better word would have been “electronic” but that was worn out in the 40s and 50s so, it seemed dated by the 70s.
And then there is the non-electronic effect units. Also known as duck running on a conveyor belt (tape) 
Thanks for the tips everyone.
It does have trimpots inside. From what I could find, “digital” was just a word they used as a sales pitch. It is all buckets.
This gives me confidence to get the 201.
Eric