Sansamp battery life?

[paf77]

Just got my Sansamp bass driver today and I'm wondering how much use you guys notice you can get with it when using a 9v battery?

 

[TakePride]

I would always change mine out before every show. I typically use it as a direct box now and I take advantage of the phantom power so I don't have to keep buying batteries.

 

[paf77]

I would always change mine out before every show. I typically use it as a direct box now and I take advantage of the phantom power so I don't have to keep buying batteries.

When you were using batteries, what signs does the sansamp give that the battery is dying? Weaker signal? Does the tone start to get worse? I just want to know what I need to look for to know when my battery is dying.

 

[phatbass]

My "normal" BDDI went for ages on a battery - plenty of warning, as even when the LED was noticeably dimming it still operated fine. I always used an alkaline (Duracell or Energiser), BTW.

 

[Jazz Ad]

I used a SansAmp for 5 years straight, always had it in the gigbag.
Most of the time I used it with a power supply but I still had a battery just in case and used it from time to time.
I never had to change it.

 

[cheapbasslovin]

When the battery is low, the pedal will distort a little bit differently than normal, even in bypass (unpleasantly). When I bought mine the guy hadn't used it in a while and the battery had gone dead so we replaced it on the spot and the difference was notable. That said they draw almost no current so you'll likely be able to use it for some time on one battery. Just unplug the input after every use.

 

[katri]

The battery on my programmable bass driver lasted for ages so I can only imagine that the standard one is a bit more economical with battery life.

 

[RBASS930]

I believe that it's supposed to last about 150 hours on battery, but shoot an email over to Tech21. They'll give you the answer.

 

[walker rosewood]

According to the manuals

BDDI power consumption is 6mA
programmable BDDI. 5mA
BD Deluxe 7mA
Para Driver 5mA


These are all crazy low, so it should last a long time on a battery. It makes sense, Tech 21 claims it is all analog circuitry, which consumes way less then digital.

 

[nathanfrost]

Running only on the battery, my SansAmp Bass Driver DI lasted 80-95 hours of solid playtime over 2.5 weeks on one Duracell 9V battery before the "Active" LED started to visibly dim, and the tone started to distort noticeably more than before, and get a little duller and less "clear/crisp". (I removed the input jack after each play session to avoid wasting battery life)

It was a pretty graceful degradation that seemed to happen "all at once" one day (though I'm sure it was more gradual than that); aside from the above signs, my recorded tone sounded pretty much the same as when the battery was fresh and the "Active" LED was bright.