My battery dies very quickly

You don't leave the cord plugged in to the bass when you're not playing, do you?

 

Are you leaving the cable pluged in all the time ? cause that
will drain the bat.

 

There is a short inside that is making it think the jack is engaged. Get it to a tech, a two minute diagnosis and solder job.

 

Does leaving the cable plugged into the bass even when the amp is turned off still drain the battery???

 

Yes.

 

Viagra

 

when your cable is plugged in, it will connect the +ve and -ve terminals. that will DRAIN the battery. before i figure this out, the battery inside my ESP drained in just 1 week!!

 

FWIW:

when I had basses with onboard preamps they lasted about 3 weeks, which at the time I didn't even know was a very short lifespan. What I did know was that, with a wall of active basses, it was time for rechargeables. They only last a matter of hours in playing time but with a $10 recharger you can recharge them 200 or so times. Plus you can use them in stomp boxes or anywhere around the house. The preamps are now gone and I never did wear out a rechargeable in the process and still have them.

Some of them a tad smaller than typically 9V which is a plus in a tight fit. You can get by on 7.2V 75 mA but 8.4v 160 mA or better is fairly optimal. 9v apparently refers to the rough size not the voltage. Typical alkalines are actually a tad over 10V when new. The radio shack charger also has a switch option for NI-cd and Ni-MH rechargeables.

 

ive got actives in both of my basses and i play every night for at least 2 hours and i havent changed a battery in years. Its been at least 2 years for my Tobias...3 months for my P-bass (it had been 2 years before that and it wasnt even dead i was just worried!)

 

FWIW:

yep, have heard similar accounts.

Another thing that can be done is to put a kill switch between the battery and circuitry. Assuming it's something draining the battery when it's not being used as opposed to consumption during use, that should resolve the issue. It would probably much quicker than tracking down the problem. Cheap and not a major opperation.

Seems you should be able to check dc voltage with meter with the bass unplugged and see if you get a reading. Not sure where, maybe running from jack to bridge. Somebody here will know. Then you'd know it's draining when unplugged. I wouldn't think one preamp would consume that much more than another during use but don't know much about.

Maybe even something in the way the jacks made since the jack acts as the switch. When I ran preamps, they all ran through the Ibanez style "tube" jacks, as opposed to the Fender-like jacks.