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Why So Few Affordable Battery Powered Bass Amps?

#81
Outdoors you're often taxing larger bass amps. If you're willing to sacrifice bottom end, you can get a bit more volume. I have used my Double-Four outside with a trio and it worked very well. It's obviously a compromise, though, and I jacked into a marine-battery+inverter setup to share power with the keyboard player.

Unfortunately those JBL EON systems aren't so hot. Unless you virtually dial-out the bottom, they will fight you using compression and suck the life out of your playing. They're really not meant to be pushed by a bass instrument. Running my double-bass into one was comical, because that 40Hz thump from the pickup would nearly cause it to bounce into protect mode.

But you know, if anyone could figure it out, I'd bet that JBL and Meyer could, but they haven't yet.
 
#82
selowitch said:
View attachment 4262626

For my part, I decided to pull the trigger on the Jackery Explorer 300 that was on sale on their website for $269.00. I figure I can experiment with different amps attached to that thing and see if I can make it through a gig with it.
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Yup! That's one of the ones I have a link to in my previous post. I think it should work well depending on how many watts you pull out of it. At least something under an hour at the full 300 watts hopefully. If inverter efficiency is 95% and class D is 90% then you should be able to run 250watts into the speaker for an hour. The battery is 293 watt-hours. They have a storefront at Amazon, same price. Please give us a report on how you like it. Nice thing about these is you don't have to re-think which small bass amp if you already have one.
 
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#83
KohanMike said:
You can throw mathematics around all day long, I know my own experience, my battery and inverter lasts for at least 5 hours
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Maybe so, but certainly not at 200W as your original post implied. 10W, maybe.

Ohm's LAW is just that - a LAW, not a theory. It's inviolable. If you have a 12V, 8AH battery, that's 96 Watt/hours in the battery, period. Spread over 5 hours and correcting for amp and inverter efficiency, that's ~10W average (could be up to 20W max if you have a true sine wave inverter, which I doubt for your stated investment of less than $100 total). No argument possible.

Hey, if it works for you, great. I was just pointing out that your solution is probably not adequate for the OP, or anyone else looking for a similar option.
 
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#84
selowitch said:
View attachment 4262626

For my part, I decided to pull the trigger on the Jackery Explorer 300 that was on sale on their website for $269.00. I figure I can experiment with different amps attached to that thing and see if I can make it through a gig with it.
Click to expand...

I would guess you'd get several hours from that using a smaller class d amp at reasonable volume.

It looks like the meter on there will actually show you how many watts your using, so that will be helpful as well, it it's decently accurate.
 
#85
pocket_groover said:
Yup! That's one of the ones I have a link to in my previous post. I think it should work well depending on how many watts you pull out of it. At least something under an hour at the full 300 watts hopefully. If inverter efficiency is 95% and class D is 90% then you should be able to run 250watts into the speaker for an hour. The battery is 293 watt-hours. They have a storefront at Amazon, same price. Please give us a report on how you like it. Nice thing about these is you don't have to re-think which small bass amp if you already have one.
Click to expand...

One thing to keep in mind is that the spec'd efficiency of both inverter and (class D) amp is only true at the full rated output. If you want to run less than full output, the efficiency of both go down, usually to the level of 60-70% by the time you reach 1/2 output. In other words, cutting the output power in half will not double the time you can get out of it.
 
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#86
OregonJim said:
Maybe so, but certainly not at 200W as your original post implied. 10W, maybe.

Ohm's LAW is just that - a LAW, not a theory. It's inviolable. If you have a 12V, 8AH battery, that's 96 Watt/hours in the battery, period. Spread over 5 hours and correcting for amp and inverter efficiency, that's ~10W average (could be up to 20W max if you have a true sine wave inverter, which I doubt for your stated investment of less than $100 total). No argument possible.

Hey, if it works for you, great. I was just pointing out that your solution is probably not adequate for the OP, or anyone else looking for a similar option.
Click to expand...

There are always naysayers who don't have first had experience, which will deter others unnecessarily. Have you used a 200w pure sine wave inverter and a 12v 8aH battery with a 15" 200w D combo amp? I have and I know that it works.

I don't want to get into a debate about this anymore.
 
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#87
My experience with small generators is that the amp they will power may not be loud enough to drown it out.

As to inverters, why? A garden variety 18v power tool battery should be get you 80w @4ohms, or bump it to a 40v rail without the crude sine wave approximation. A 5ah pack could run about an hour.
 
#88
KohanMike said:
There are always naysayers who don't have first had experience, which will deter others unnecessarily. Have you used a 200w pure sine wave inverter and a 12v 8aH battery with a 15" 200w D combo amp? I have and I know that it works.

I don't want to get into a debate about this anymore.
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I have not only used them, I have designed them. Commercially. You still have not defined what you mean by "it works". I already granted you that "it works", but I also know that it CAN'T work for 5 hours unless your average output power is in the 10W range. Not 200W.

You don't need first hand experience to know that 100 gallons of water won't fit in a 10 gallon bucket.

I'll let you have the last word - I don't need to say anymore. Peace.
 
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#89
OregonJim said:
One thing to keep in mind is that the spec'd efficiency of both inverter and (class D) amp is only true at the full rated output. If you want to run less than full output, the efficiency of both go down, usually to the level of 60-70% by the time you reach 1/2 output. In other words, cutting the output power in half will not double the time you can get out of it.
Click to expand...

Good info! Thanks for the informative post. I did not consider this in my post.

I found some graphs that demonstrate what you said:
classD-1.jpg


from:

Class-D Audio Amplifier Basic – HandsOn Tech

and inverter efficiency:

efficurve_2.jpg


from:
6.5. Efficiency of Inverters | EME 812: Utility Solar Power and Concentration
 
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#92
selowitch said:
I would argue there's more demand now for battery-powered amplification than there was before the pandemic. Maybe there is an opportunity here for a new product or two.
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IMO If you're right we should've started seeing them already. I've never had an outdoor gig where there was no electricity close by, and running extension cables is easy.
 
#94
MYLOWFREQ said:
IMO If you're right we should've started seeing them already.
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Under normal circumstances, the time from product conception to actual production can be a year or more. Couple that with the current state of the supply chain and the ability to procure parts - it should be easy to understand why we don't see anything yet. If you assume that the higher-ups realize that the market need is only temporary, then we may never see a product.
 
#95
KohanMike said:
You can throw mathematics around all day long, I know my own experience, my battery and inverter lasts for at least 5 hours
Click to expand...

I believe you.

The issue with some of the responses here, the way I see it, is that:
1) They may talking about recreating the same levels of bass that you'd get at a 'proper' gig.
2) They see a 200W amplifier and are looking for ways to power the amplifier at max output, when in reality you are unlikely to be using anything close to that number.

Years ago I needed battery-operated amplification. My band wanted to busk at the beach, at a couple of parks and on several spots around town. We've got a busy annual festival here and the regulations about street playing are relaxed somewhat and it's a lot of fun plus we actually get a few gig offers while we're at it, sell CDs etc. It's a nice experience.
I considered going the inverter+battery route and use my little MarkBass CMD121P, as the battery opeated amplifiers I could find were either too small, or too expensive for what might have been a one-off thing (it didn't, we did it a lot over the years, but it could have well turned out that we do it once and never again). I found the info very confusing... some argued I needed huge batteries and it just became too big and heavy, and I just didn't have enough experience to judge what I really needed.

I ended up trying a cheap solution. One of those 'portable PA' units. A QTX QR10PA. It's less than 10Kg, reasonably small, various inputs including USB. The wireless mic was quickly discarded, but the unit itself is not bad, and the box made of some kind of plastic that takes bumps and scratches pretty well. It's rated at 100W with a built-in rechargeable battery of some sort.

I presume the 100W rating is very optimistic... but the truth is, in practice, this thing is more than loud enough, and I don't turn volume to max either. However, see point #1 above: no, it's not the level you'll expect at a festival or an indoor gig. Of course not. But it's a very good volume to play outside with the band in a city environment. People can stand a good 10m-20m away and hear what we do very well.

The band? It's a ska/funk originals type of band. Not exactly coffee-house chilled quiet.

* 3 guitarists with a Roland MicroCube each.
* 1 drummer, using just hi-hats and snare for portability. Sometimes he'd use a small bass drum. Or sometimes he'd use a cajon and we'd mic it and put it through my 'portable PA' thingy (I bought a battery operated 4 channel stereo mixer for around £30 too).
* myself on bass
* 2 trumpets and 1 sax, no amplification
* 1 main vocalist (sometimes 2) who either used his own little vocal amp, or put his mic through mi miniPA unit too.

That was good enough for several hours. Definitely 3-4 hours. Guitar amps tended to run out of juice after 3h. Sometimes I noticed my amp started to distort a bit when pushed, indicating battery was starting to suffer, but turning down bass EQ would sort that.

So, judging from that experience, I imagine your solution is a pretty good one for the stated purpose.

If you want 'proper' outdoor gig type of levels, then yeah you're going to need a lot more power but it didn't seem to me like the OP was talking about that kind of situations.
 
#96
selowitch said:
I would argue there's more demand now for battery-powered amplification than there was before the pandemic. Maybe there is an opportunity here for a new product or two.
Click to expand...

Even if there is local power I have to say I would prefer not to plug into it if I didn't have to - a self-powered amp makes a whole lot of safety and power quality concerns go away.
 
#97
I am doing a busking gig, today using my little Warwick 10 watt BC-10. Which is plenty loud competing with the guitar and keys little battery units and the drummer on a mini kit. I run it with my car battery jumper box, 600 peak amps with a $25 Dewalt 120w Inverter I picked up at Home Depot. I have gone 2 hours plus so far without an issue. This little BC-10 has a great bottom end but not the best high end and does not draw much juice. I may try this setup with my Genz Benz Shuttle 3.0 soon just to see how that works, but so far my needs are filled and the rig is very portable to get to this park gig.
 
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#99
selowitch said:
Despite the pandemic and the movement toward outdoor-only performances, I remain surprised at the dearth of battery-powered bass amps and/or heads. I have a Phil Jones Double Four BG-75 with a portable power supply, but it's just not quite loud enough on its own for my outdoor gigging needs. I also have a Roland BA-330 which functions decently as a bass amp as well as a 4-6 channel PA and runs on 8 x AA batteries. It's even possible to use those two in concert with each other and that gets me pretty much where I need to be. I even hear that a Quilter Interbass with a mobile power supply and speaker cabinet can surpass the Double Four in practical volume, though I don't have one of those.

Still, I'm wondering why there are so few options for battery-powered bass playing outdoors. I know Phil Jones has some higher-end battery-powered stuff like the Briefcase Ultimate, but that's mighty expensive.
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I'm not sure how it was wired up, but when my son was I. High school, he played through an amp powered by a car battery. Loud enough to carry a 125 marching member band. I got to push that rig (not very attractive I might add) through the streets of London when they marched in the Millennium Parade.
 
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