Battery Powered Rigs

[bronzetalon]

This is all battery powered with a enloop and the pignoses internal battery.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4BjLgoT4zM[/youtube]

[rustywire]

Say you live somewhere where the majority of guitarists are acoustic players that flood every venue and jam room for miles. They complain about how loud your gear is and praise how they can play their acoustics anywhere...

...with no crunch, sustain, tremolo, delay, phasing or fuzz. So on and so forth.

It's similar to the purist "amp-only" guys who brag about "having all they need" plugging straight in...then play nothing but cowboy chords and copped blues licks.

Such nonsense is met with awkward silence, then laughter.

Even Bob Ross, a soft-spoken master of simple tools and technique; did not restrict himself to the use of a single brush or color...in painting tens of thousands of similar scenes. As a result, his art had broad horizons. Literally and figuratively.

And while I appreciate minimalism, those purist characters never seem to create anything masterful with their posturing.

[01010111]

12 D-cells
Jesus.
How much battery life do you get out of that?

One dubstep song.

lol yeaaa better get your thief on. somebody told me that back in the 80s, u could make mad bread stealing D batteries from stores and reselling them on the street.

don't get this one tho. TDK made a newer one that operates off a USB rechargeable battery...muchhhh better!
i have the newer one. its great, the sound quality is tight.

That new one looks pretty cool, but how loud does it get? Is it basically that 20w 2-speaker boombox with a USB rechargeable battery? Could it keep up with an energetic drummer playing with brushes? ...is it magic?

[01010111]

I do agree rusty. With electric you have an entire universe of sounds and songs to explore that aren't available if you just play acoustic; people around here are just neoluddites and insanely close-minded.

How loud is the pignose in that vid bronzetalon? Because that actually sounds a lot better than I expected from the pignose.

[hiorgos]

---

[univalve]

If we Talk about amps, this:

Pipe. Amp.

[Dr. Sherman Sticks M.D.]

That new one looks pretty cool, but how loud does it get? Is it basically that 20w 2-speaker boombox with a USB rechargeable battery? Could it keep up with an energetic drummer playing with brushes? ...is it magic?

it does get pretty loud. not sure about keeping up with a drummer tho. maybe w/ brushes.
i never used it w/ a drummer or plugged a guitar into it.

mostly just beat machines/synths/samplers n stuff. it gets loud enough to rock a street corner for sure.

[01010111]

That new one looks pretty cool, but how loud does it get? Is it basically that 20w 2-speaker boombox with a USB rechargeable battery? Could it keep up with an energetic drummer playing with brushes? ...is it magic?

it does get pretty loud. not sure about keeping up with a drummer tho. maybe w/ brushes.
i never used it w/ a drummer or plugged a guitar into it.

mostly just beat machines/synths/samplers n stuff. it gets loud enough to rock a street corner for sure.

Hmmm.... I'm probably leaning towards getting either the 2-speaker boombox or soundcube and getting a bunch of rechargeable D-cells, just so I can have that extra volume. I definitely like this option over the purely battery based amps, it feels like a more elegant solution than just putting a battery pack on an amp.

[rfurtkamp]

The Crates have internal real batteries, and have a damn decent battery life - I don't think I ever ran mine out at multiple 3+ hour jam sessions.

[01010111]

From what I've been able to find those 2 and 3 speaker tdk boomboxes were designed to have a 10-12 hr battery life. Time for lists.

Tdk 2-speaker boombox:
Pros:
10 hr battery life
Shoulder strap and narrow profile make it easy to carry
Could very easily be used for non-instrument amp purposes

Cons:
Might sound shitty with guitar
Weighs roughly 25 lbs with batteries
Takes 10 d-cell batteries

Crate tx50db:
Pros:
50 watts through a ten inch speaker!
Built in rechargeable battery pack
Might sound better than the tdk with guitar
Good battery life 3+ hrs

Cons:
Bulky (if I was taking public transit I couldn't pass this off as a shoulder bag or duffle very easy because of it's very definite I Am An Amp shape)
More expensive
Weighs 30lbs (which is actually kinda cool considering the amount of power it has)

I could get rechargeable batteries for the boombox which would kinda fix that issue a bit. I'm gonna see if I can try these out with a guitar. My hunch is that the boombox is made to handle line-level equipment, and if so that might make a preamp necessary to make it sound right, but if It comes to that the crate would make more sense simply because it would be "plug and play."

[rfurtkamp]

It'll need more than a preamp, the boombox will have sound reproduction speakers and circuits designed for that, not sound production. Will work in a pinch but not be ideal.

[01010111]

Reproduction vs production? That's a new concept for me. Why should a soundsystem made for reproducing sound behave so differently from one made for producing sound? Irregardless, I feel like unless I plug into both, I won't be able to make an informed decision.

[rfurtkamp]

Ever plug a guitar into a stereo system?

It doesn't sound real great. It's some of the preamp, some of the speakers.

That's what you'er doing here.

And don't get me wrong, you may like what you hear - the speakers on the boombox (stereo) are full range versus voiced for instruments.

[01010111]

Guitar and bass amps not being "full range" has always bothered me. I'm just curious about how they play, because it always feels like different amps have certain dynamics with how you play them.

The boombox appeals to me on sooo many levels, it's a sleek, sexy, shoulderbag-style amp, and as long as it doesn't sound like shit with a guitar I'll probably get it. But if it doesn't play well with the guitar, then the crate might be the one. The crate just LOOKS like it would be difficult to carry around. I need to know what they both feel like when I play through them.

[rfurtkamp]

Crate I always just put o a luggage rolling cart along with other accessories/pedals/bag of cables so weight wasn't an issue.