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Battery Powered Pedal Board

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2019 6:39 pm
by jubbathehog
In case anyone's looking at doing the same thing, I just went down the path of building a small, cheap battery powered pedal board with enough power to run 5 pedals for a decent time before needing recharging.
I just wanted something for 5-6 9V pedals that didn't need mains power and I could leave the pedals plugged in so it was quick to set up and pack away. There are a few commercial options available that would do it, but I wasn't sure how long the batteries would last, and I was too tight to try them out.
The short version of the story, for around $60 it works, and my pedals run pretty silently off the power bank for hopefully around 20 hours. (haven't run the battery down yet, so is looking good). To recharge the battery, its just a USB power supply plugged into a USB C connector. But there are a few things to look out for......
There's a thread on thegearpage.net that has some great info about people using power banks, the battery banks you use to charge up your cell phones etc and a step up convertor to bring the voltage to 9V.
So I bought a 15000 mAH Kogan battery bank of trademe (Dick Smith) for $40, a voltage step up convertor off ebay for around $5 and a daisy chain from the rock shop. I thought if it didn't work I could still use the power bank to charge my phone anyway.
The step up convertors all seem to have the connector with the wrong polarity, so you have to swap it around to negative center pin to match most 9V pedals. I also made sure that the power bank had a switch, so it can be turned off while it is still plugged in.
Most power banks have an auto shutoff feature (the one I bought did) so if you're not drawing enough current the thing shuts down after 15 seconds. I found that it did this if I had only one pedal plugged in, but if I had a few plugged in, even if they weren't switched in, I was OK. The other thing that the people on the gear page all talked about was the cct noise from the power banks. It seems to be a bit of a gamble whether it will operate silently depending on the pedals you're running. I found that as long as I had an old Ibanez digital delay plugged in (didn't have to be switched on) everything was pretty quiet. That was running 5 pedals. If I took the delay pedal out, I got a power switching noise that was quite loud, and definitely not acceptable. But if I unplugged the tuner as well, it was quiet again. So still running 2 drives and a tremolo. As I use the delay for slap back sometimes, I kept it in there, and its all good.
Next I put together a board out of an old tea trolley they were throwing out from work, velcroed the battery bank underneath, and bobs yr uncle.
I haven't run it right down so not sure how long it will last before recharging. But in theory, 15000mAh @ 3.7V is 6167 mAh @ 9V minus conversion losses. So if my pedals altogether draw 300mA, hopefully I'll get close to 20 hours out of it.
Here's some pics...
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Re: Battery Powered Pedal Board

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2019 6:51 pm
by Single coil
Pretty fuckin good

Re: Battery Powered Pedal Board

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2019 6:58 pm
by Slowy
Cool post; thanks.
No disrespect, but I can't help thinking you're plugging away at a problem that doesn't really exist. I have 2 pedalboards; both have quality power supplies attached.

Setup is the time it takes to unzip the bag, place the board on the floor, attach 2 Jacks and a jug cord and plug it in. From there on, everything works perfectly and silently until I reverse the procedure and go home. I also have enough juice in reserve to throw in an extra Strymon or two if the mood takes me.

I guess what I an trying to ask is, what are you looking to achieve by doing it through consumable power?

Re: Battery Powered Pedal Board

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2019 7:10 pm
by jeremyb
Nice work! I use one of these: https://www.rockshop.co.nz/shop/rockboa ... oards.html (it's actually the second I've owned, when my older boards grew I needed different voltages etc... now I'm back with a small board again and this is working great!

Coolest benefit is you can daisy chain to your hearts content as you have no ground loop issues, however some pedals may still add noise to others, but you can put them on the second output, I also like that it has a USB output for charging your phone, or in my case I build a USB powered arduino channel switcher for my amp so I can run that off this too, win win!

Re: Battery Powered Pedal Board

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2019 7:20 pm
by JHorner
Amen to no ground loops!

And not being plugged into the same multi box as the drummers ball fan!

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Re: Battery Powered Pedal Board

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2019 8:02 pm
by jubbathehog
Slowy wrote:Cool post; thanks.
No disrespect, but I can't help thinking you're plugging away at a problem that doesn't really exist. I have 2 pedalboards; both have quality power supplies attached.

Setup is the time it takes to unzip the bag, place the board on the floor, attach 2 Jacks and a jug cord and plug it in. From there on, everything works perfectly and silently until I reverse the procedure and go home. I also have enough juice in reserve to throw in an extra Strymon or two if the mood takes me.

I guess what I an trying to ask is, what are you looking to achieve by doing it through consumable power?
It's purely for convenience and so you don't have to hunt around for a power outlet playing live. But you're right, an AC supply is a better option when power is there.

Re: Battery Powered Pedal Board

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2019 8:12 pm
by jubbathehog
jeremyb wrote:Nice work! I use one of these: https://www.rockshop.co.nz/shop/rockboa ... oards.html (it's actually the second I've owned, when my older boards grew I needed different voltages etc... now I'm back with a small board again and this is working great!

Coolest benefit is you can daisy chain to your hearts content as you have no ground loop issues, however some pedals may still add noise to others, but you can put them on the second output, I also like that it has a USB output for charging your phone, or in my case I build a USB powered arduino channel switcher for my amp so I can run that off this too, win win!
Those look good. In hindsight, I should have got one of those.

Re: Battery Powered Pedal Board

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2019 6:55 am
by Terexgeek
Slowy wrote:Cool post; thanks.
No disrespect, but I can't help thinking you're plugging away at a problem that doesn't really exist. I have 2 pedalboards; both have quality power supplies attached.

Setup is the time it takes to unzip the bag, place the board on the floor, attach 2 Jacks and a jug cord and plug it in. From there on, everything works perfectly and silently until I reverse the procedure and go home. I also have enough juice in reserve to throw in an extra Strymon or two if the mood takes me.

I guess what I an trying to ask is, what are you looking to achieve by doing it through consumable power?
I'm sorry, but what quality power supplies are there for 5 to 6 pedal for under a $100?

This build was $60. Sounds like it's cheap AND quiet.

Re: Battery Powered Pedal Board

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2019 7:13 am
by mrmofo
I`ve been thinking about doing this for a while.
thanks for the inspiration

Re: Battery Powered Pedal Board

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2019 7:41 am
by Single coil
Terexgeek wrote: I'm sorry, but what quality power supplies are there for 5 to 6 pedal for under $100?
https://www.rockshop.co.nz/shop/1-spot- ... rtors.html

Re: Battery Powered Pedal Board

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2019 7:47 am
by jeremyb
Single coil wrote:
Terexgeek wrote: I'm sorry, but what quality power supplies are there for 5 to 6 pedal for under $100?
https://www.rockshop.co.nz/shop/1-spot- ... rtors.html
Theres no isolation tho', a battery affords you many benefits!

Re: Battery Powered Pedal Board

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2019 8:04 am
by Single coil
Righto, still a quality power supply. No issues with mine in 7 or 8 years, noise included.

Re: Battery Powered Pedal Board

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2019 8:16 am
by Terexgeek
Single coil wrote:Righto, still a quality power supply. No issues with mine in 7 or 8 years, noise included.
That's luck and pedal choice, to get the same performance as battery you need to be comparing isolated power supplies.

Re: Battery Powered Pedal Board

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2019 9:52 am
by The Scarecrow
I like this simply because of the thought that's gone into it. Awesome stuff.

Re: Battery Powered Pedal Board

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2019 5:33 pm
by Slowy
Terexgeek wrote: I'm sorry, but what quality power supplies are there for 5 to 6 pedal for under a $100?

This build was $60. Sounds like it's cheap AND quiet.
And that's a valid point. :thumbup: