Not sure if this is the right forum, but it's a neat little story...

[envika]

My father is friends with reggae singer Frederick "Toots" Hibbert, from Toots and the Maytals. A few years back, Toots' band played at a festival where the PA system was entirely solar powered, and it actually sounded audibly much better! Because when you're plugged in through AC power, there's all sorts of crap coming through the line, resulting in more interference including the dreaded 60-cycle hum. But if the PA isn't going through the regular power lines, then you have a completely noiseless setup...you could put 600 regular j-bass pickups on a bass and it wouldn't hum at all. I think festivals should do this more often (unless price is a concern?)

[kevinmoore73]

The joke is probably flying over my head as I type this, but the solar power would still get converted to 60Hz AC because that's what all the gear expects to see. That would be the case unless it was some kind of custom DC-powered PA system.

[envika]

aah...maybe

[DavidRavenMoon]

Yes.. the hum you hear is not from the mains... it's from the transformers in your amplifier, and other electromagnetic sources like that. You can plug your Jazz bass into a battery powered headphone amp, and you will still hear hum.

AC power does have noise, but it's filtered out at the power supply.

[jonny 290]

Theoretically there'd be absolutely nothing stopping anybody from directly powering a solid state amp from DC of the appropriate voltage, bypassing the power supply and regulation circuit.

although i do agree with the sentiment in the thread, i'll pick a power-company generated sine wave over the junk that inverters put out. It may have sounded good, but this seems like the 'carrot switch' from that thread a little farther down.

edit: oh god, i wonder how many tone snobs i could convince to hook ten lawnmower batteries to their bass head you know, in theory, the much lower output impedance of car batteries relative to power supplies mean much more solid low end...