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Battery changing day


Armitage

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I'm not a big "pedal" guy, but these are the tried and true for me. Sometimes you just need colour. And I use Energizer Industrial 9v batteries, not only do they last a long time, they don't leak and ruin your pedals/guitars.

20210119_105112.jpg

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I'm with G Man here - now that my bass and guitar pedalboards are both set up with power supplies I have zero tolerance for worrying about batteries.

The one place I still have to worry about 9V's is my Sustainer Chap. It has a first gen sustainer so it uses two of them and it goes through them pretty quickly so I am considering building a +9V/-9V power supply that uses Lithium Ion batteries meant for a small drone. I am hoping to come up with something small enough to fit into the stock battery compartment and may have it connect using the stock 9V battery terminals so I don't need to do any mods.  

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5 hours ago, HAMERMAN said:

I'm with G Man here - now that my bass and guitar pedalboards are both set up with power supplies I have zero tolerance for worrying about batteries.

The one place I still have to worry about 9V's is my Sustainer Chap. It has a first gen sustainer so it uses two of them and it goes through them pretty quickly so I am considering building a +9V/-9V power supply that uses Lithium Ion batteries meant for a small drone. I am hoping to come up with something small enough to fit into the stock battery compartment and may have it connect using the stock 9V battery terminals so I don't need to do any mods.  

EMG has a pedalboard power boxer their pickups:  https://www.emgpickups.com/es-918.html

I suppose that could be made to work for the sustainer?

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On 1/19/2021 at 4:08 PM, Armitage said:

After putzing around all day... I'm starting to think of unloading a bunch... some like the Empress Multidrive and Super Duper 2in1 are a lot of bux to keep in a box for "just in case" days.

I'm seeing an awful lot of phase shifting going on there.

 

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Just before my "blessed event" I went through and changed all the batteries in the guitars that need them.  Actually  it was acoustics, electrics, basses, ukuleles, mandolins, you name it.  I went through a Sam's 12-pack plus one or two.  Now I know when a battery last went into something.  At least for a while I can be confident when I pick something up.  Actually playing it is another matter.

 

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On 1/19/2021 at 11:25 AM, Armitage said:

I'm not a big "pedal" guy, but these are the tried and true for me. Sometimes you just need colour. And I use Energizer Industrial 9v batteries, not only do they last a long time, they don't leak and ruin your pedals/guitars.

20210119_105112.jpg

Are they Alkaline?

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On 1/20/2021 at 2:48 PM, velorush said:

images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSnWsKzSwgoj157tyKTMgW

@gtrdaddy, I didn't think anyone but me remembered the Eveready Cat.

I do.

That's what I remember as a kid in the 50's/60's

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On 1/19/2021 at 3:08 PM, Armitage said:

After putzing around all day... I'm starting to think of unloading a bunch... some like the Empress Multidrive and Super Duper 2in1 are a lot of bux to keep in a box for "just in case" days.

They are a also a lot of bux to rebuy when you need one! 

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On 1/20/2021 at 1:48 PM, velorush said:

images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSnWsKzSwgoj157tyKTMgW

@gtrdaddy, I didn't think anyone but me remembered the Eveready Cat.

Oh I do.  The Eveready cat, yellow-and-blue Ray-O-Vacs...and of course the Radio Shack Battery Club (stock photos).

Batteries.jpg

Radio Shack Battery Club.jpg

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

BTW, the Energizer Industrial are marginally better then the Energizer Max, (insignificant) but about $1.80 each...

 

But don't buy off Amazon, loads of people complain they got old batteries. Check the label yourself at a hardware store.

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On 1/25/2021 at 6:13 PM, Toadroller said:

Why don't those ever fail at 3:00 in the afternoon instead of 3:00 in the morning?

Because it's natural law, you know?  3:00am is better than not at all...

On a serious and related note, one of my two Lab mutts started crying/yelping outside my bedroom window (my canines live outdoors out here in the sticks) at about 3:30am on Friday. My wife and I immediately sat bolt upright because while the dogs bark frequently (at all manners of woodland creatures at virtually any hour), neither ever cries or yelps unless something is gravely amiss.  Within 10 secoonds of the older Lab crying out, all of our smoke alarms began screeching and it was then that we noticed a strong, acrid smell of something electrical burning.  My wife also noticed that night lights in our kitchen were flickering and that the lights in our bedroom did not work at all. The kids made their way downstairs at that moment and everyone grabbed coats and shoes in order to exit the house and meet outside.

Fighting grogginess, I abandoned the thought of trying to isolate the source of the fumes (there was neither visible smoke nor evidence of flames; just fumes) and ran to the garage to shut off the mains in the breaker box.  My wife had already called to summon the local volunteer FD. When the cavalry arrived, they stopped at the entry to my 1/3 mile long "hog path" driveway.  It had rained heavily off-and-on for several days here in central NC and they could not/would not risk getting those heavy tanker/pumper trucks stuck in the mud on a primitive road.  So...my son met them at the highway in his 4wd pickup and brought two firefighters back to our house with some scanning equipment and chemical sprayers.  By that time, the mains had been shut off for ~15 minutes and the FD's infrared scanners showed no heat signatures anywhere in the house. They left us with the recommendation to keep the mains off until a qualified electrician could isolate the issue.

Saturday morning, whilst trying to summon an electrician, it dawned on me that the symptoms we'd experienced the previous evening suggested a power supply issue (from the pole to the meter) rather than an inside-the-house root cause.  I called our electric co-op outage hotline and in about two hours, I received a call from an old friend of mine who works for the co-op as a lineman and tech.  Seems that a squirrel--yes, a damn squirrel--had made a nest in the riser that sheaths the secondary on the utility pole feeding my house and had chewed through some of the wire insulation (apparently some time ago).  The most recent monsoon rains exacerbated the existing damage caused by the squirrels and the result was a nasty surge sent from the pole through my meter and into my house.  My old bud spliced in a new section of wire and encapsualted the riser to prevent future rodent infiltration.  

After restoring the power to all circuits and checking every device and appliance in my house, I lost a mere two items to surge damage:  an old unused xBox 360 and its accompanying cheap flat screen TV.  None of my plugged-in amps or effects suffered damage.  Three different surge protectors burned up (internally), which means they did their job.  It was one of those surge protectors that emitted the noxious fumes that I suppose my dogs smelled from outside my bedroom windows. 

Moral(s) of the story:

1. Buy and use good quality surge protectors for everything you don't want destroyed by a surge or brownout. 

2. Dogs love their humans and will exhibit uncanny perceptiveness in protecting their owners.

3. While I detest the ubiquitous 3:00am timing of the dreaded low-battery chirp, I'm thankful that my smoke detectors worked at 3:30am on Friday.

4. I really need to work on my "hog path" access road whenever these biblical rains let up.

5. Squirrels suck.

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