I played an active jazz Plus for years and never had a problem with battery failure while playing. I've been in situations where the battery will start to flag, when that happens just flip it to passive, turn it up, and dial it in on the fly. At the break, change the battery, and it's all GTG. I keep the required screwdriver, a spare battery and a small flashlight in the case for that bass, takes about a minute to change the battery out.
Another thing I learned the hard way. If I'm setting up for the night, I find a socket and plug in all my stomp boxes. Fortunately that's only a tuner, but plugging it in eliminates one more opportunity for failure at an awkward moment.
Something I'm learning as I get more familiar with current amplification equipment, you don't need an active bass with most current amps and cabs. Everything you need is in the head and cab.
The improvements in amp and cab tech since the 80's~90's when I was playing out a lot is huge. Where your typical solid state back then sounded like farts in a bathtub, you needed a refined signal from the bass to get it sweet. These days you can set it all on the amp so all you have to mess with at the bass is volume and still get a killer tone/sound.
When I got back into it a few years back I've wanted a jacked up active standard jazz because my J Plus is such a tone monster with it's pre and I wanted something with that quality plus the all weather capability a standard has that my plus does not. I started with an old amp and a OTB stock MIM J and it sounded OK but I couldn't get that balance between chest punching low and still be able to hear the highs or the other way round, singing on the high end but lacking any haunches on the bottom. Based on my experience, my first thought was I need an active bass because my Plus had made even the crappiest squawk box sound good. I start looking around at pre's and tried several of the current offerings and they are cool but way to complicated. Great tones were possible, but once you moved the knobs away from that great tone, it took an hour to find it again. I also tried several control configs and even a tonestyler, but nothing was blowing my dress up like I wanted it. I was also looking to upgrade my amp(s) and cabs to something more modern and started looking for what I wanted at prices I could afford. I waited till I got decent deals on stuff so the new head and cabs took a while but once I got my current rig together, I quickly learned my stock j basses, both AIM and MIM sounded really good with just little tweaking of the controls on the head. I'm still pursuing an active standard J, but I suspect it's going to only confirm what I've already figured out, my new head renders the need for an active bass obsolete.
