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How do you feel about pedals that DO NOT take batteries?

would you buy a pedal if it cannot take batteries?

  • yes

    Votes: 199 83.6%

  • no

    Votes: 11 4.6%

  • maybe one special pedal, but not generally

    Votes: 19 8.0%

  • real bunnies eat carrots, not batteries

    Votes: 9 3.8%
  • Total voters
    238
#141
moosapotamus said:
How about this...

Would you absolutely not buy a pedal that would not run on a battery, if it was not sold with a power supply?

Personally, I would, because I use a power supply with enough capacity to power my whole pedalboard. So I don't need any more wall warts. How many besides me have a big box full of wall warts that you hardly ever use?

But I have had music store owners tell me that you must include a power supply with the pedal if it does not accept a battery.

~ Charlie
Click to expand...
I've bought plenty of pedals from eBay that came with neither battery nor AC adapter. Never considered that an issue really. Are we assuming we're talking about NEW pedals?
The OP didn't specify that they had to be new.

But on the other side of that...Yes, I'm one of those guys who has a bag full of 9v adapters already.



Sent from my iPhone 5c using TalkBass mobile app
 
#142
9_volt_battery_snap_to_2.1_mm_DC_adapter.jpg


This is also a good thing to have in your gigbag in case of emergency.
 
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#144
I actually used a battery for the first time in years today ... travelled light to tonight's rehearsal with only a bass and a VT Bass DI. My amp is at home for an investigation into a silent DI output, so I used the VT and our PA. It would not have been a big deal to bring a 1Spot too of course, but I thought I'd try a battery for a change. It worked, and the guys in the band of course had to make some funny remarks about how much my pedalboard had shrunk. :)
 
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#145
One place you should never keep a 9V battery is in your front pants pocket with coins… because you will soon have some wacky dance moves on stage.:D

For a culture with technology that is ever moving faster into personal/portable devices, computer power back-up systems, hybrid and totally electronic vehicles… the ecology arguments are certainly valid. But here in central NY we have a really good waste management and recovery system in place. All of us are required to separate recyclables from the rest of our trash. Then all of the trash goes through additional recovery waste streams to remove dangerous and valuable material. The non-recyclable trash is then safely incinerated, generating power for 30,000 homes. The waste from the incinerator is then blended with rock and cement to make cinder blocks for construction. We have reduced our trash to the landfill by over 90%.

A few dozen years ago, NY along with several other states, started charging a 5 cent deposit for bottle and can beverages. Before the deposit, there was can and bottle litter everywhere. Today you will have a hard time finding bottle and can litter anywhere. So, if they started to charge a deposit for batteries I think the battery eco issues would completely disappear in a short time.

-Frank
 
#146
boomertech said:
But here in central NY we have a really good waste management and recovery system in place. All of us are required to separate recyclables from the rest of our trash. Then all of the trash goes through additional recovery waste streams to remove dangerous and valuable material. The non-recyclable trash is then safely incinerated, generating power for 30,000 homes. The waste from the incinerator is then blended with rock and cement to make cinder blocks for construction. We have reduced our trash to the landfill by over 90%.
Click to expand...

That's pretty impressive. I don't know why more jurisdictions can't do something like this. The deposit for recyclables is pretty common, but it would actually be a good idea for batteries as well. A lot of useful chemicals are wasted in single-use batteries that just get thrown away.
 
#147
In the province of Quebec, the provincial gov simply restricted the amount of waste cities can produce and incinerate or send to landfills. These restrictions were accompanied by reduction targets that must be met overtime. So, in Montreal, my recycling bin is about 5 times the size of my trash can and all the boroughs are implementing composting and distributing new waste cans for that purpose. It's pretty easy to get people to recycle and compost when you make it mandatory and super easy. At least, that is the case here.
 
#149
nshuman said:
In the province of Quebec, the provincial gov simply restricted the amount of waste cities can produce and incinerate or send to landfills. These restrictions were accompanied by reduction targets that must be met overtime. So, in Montreal, my recycling bin is about 5 times the size of my trash can and all the boroughs are implementing composting and distributing new waste cans for that purpose. It's pretty easy to get people to recycle and compost when you make it mandatory and super easy. At least, that is the case here.
Click to expand...
There's a risk involved here; not all people behave when you have new mandatory restrictions, instead of changing their consumption behaviour some start dumping their excess in a nearby forest when the allowed bin is full. I see this a lot when out photographing. Still, we need to cut down on waste, but the best way in my opinion is to not produce unnecessary or harmful materials in the first place (i.e less packaging) and work with deposits so people have an incentive not to dump things in nature.

To get back on topic; use rechargeable batteries. The 9V kind are however a bit expensive and also short-lived in my experience. (Or maybe I haven't tried ones that are good enough quality, it's been a while). I use lots of AA ones for my flashes and those work great.
 
#151
There's another alternative - supercapacitors. I don't think the current load capacity of available supercaps is quite up to pedalboard-gigging standards but it might work for powering the onboard preamp. All my onboard preamps will work with 9-18 volts so there's enough of a working voltage difference to allow a decent amount of operation time for small (<50ma) current needs. A supercap could be easily recharged much faster than a rechargeable battery. It would be more feasible to add a supercap to each pedal and be able to give the board a quick zap between sets to recharge but then that's not a whole lot different than simply leaving the pedalboard connected to a wallwart.

The difference between a supercap and a battery is that the supercap's voltage will ramp down as current is drawn from it. Because the battery's voltage is derived from a chemical reaction, the voltage is fairly constant until the end of the discharge limits. This means that either the preamp needs to operate across a wide range of voltages or you'll need some form of very efficient DC-to-DC conversion of you're going to use a supercap for this application.

I started to look into design one a couple of years ago but the parts were still fairly expensive and it was easier to just rewire my bass to work off a wallwart. With additional price reductions, it might now be more economical.

If you want to go the rechargeable battery route, the advances in rechargeables for RC model planes are impressive. Last time I looked, they were using Li ion polymer batteries to get higher power density levels than is available in OTS normal rechargeable batteries.
 
#152
I actually prefer pedals that don't take batteries. All of my stuff is on a board with a central power supply. So batteries are unnecessary, extra weight, and extra space in the enclosure. I love my Mooers and similar pedals that are battery free. The lone exception would be pedal tuners. In each case I have a bass, 2 cables, strap, and battery powered tuner. If I decide to grab a bass and go play somewhere without my board/rig/etc I can still tune silently and be ready to go.
 
#154
strictlybass_ic said:
I actually prefer pedals that don't take batteries. All of my stuff is on a board with a central power supply. So batteries are unnecessary, extra weight, and extra space in the enclosure. I love my Mooers and similar pedals that are battery free. The lone exception would be pedal tuners. In each case I have a bass, 2 cables, strap, and battery powered tuner. If I decide to grab a bass and go play somewhere without my board/rig/etc I can still tune silently and be ready to go.
Click to expand...

For that, I'd keep a small number of headstock tuners around. I already have a bunch.
 
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#155
FretNoMore said:
To get back on topic; use rechargeable batteries. The 9V kind are however a bit expensive and also short-lived in my experience. (Or maybe I haven't tried ones that are good enough quality, it's been a while). I use lots of AA ones for my flashes and those work great.
Click to expand...

The current crop of Zoom pedals and similar things take AA so as long as you have a couple of chargers that take four apiece and a reasonable stock of rechargeables and keep the charged ones in a suitably marked box that doesn't allow end-to-end contact it works pretty well. I did have an issue when the venue had radio mics we used, and I put rechargeables in there, and for some reason it wasn't happy with them and the mics went down just at the end of soundcheck so there was a mad scramble to get more batteries.

The ultimate in green powering for pedals would be to attach some sort of device to capture the energy of hyperactive singers like Bruce Dickinson.
 
#156
-Asdfgh- said:
The current crop of Zoom pedals and similar things take AA so as long as you have a couple of chargers that take four apiece and a reasonable stock of rechargeables and keep the charged ones in a suitably marked box that doesn't allow end-to-end contact it works pretty well. I did have an issue when the venue had radio mics we used, and I put rechargeables in there, and for some reason it wasn't happy with them and the mics went down just at the end of soundcheck so there was a mad scramble to get more batteries.

The ultimate in green powering for pedals would be to attach some sort of device to capture the energy of hyperactive singers like Bruce Dickinson.
Click to expand...


Do what I did, get a nice Titanium 16 AA/AAA charger

http://www.amazon.ca/Titanium-Battery-100-240V-Adapters-MD-1600L/dp/B005UNPM3M
 
#159
boomertech said:
So, if they started to charge a deposit for batteries I think the battery eco issues would completely disappear in a short time.
Click to expand...

That's an awesome idea.

Actually, the only batteries I use any more are eneloop AA rechargables in the wireless transmitter for my bass. One pair will get me through a 3-set gig, but I usually change them out after the 2nd set, just because. I bought a 4-pack with a charger almost two years ago, and they're still going strong.

~ Charlie
 

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