Power consumption Question

[remmelt]

What is too much? How many mAmps will drain a battery too quickly?

I am building a Red Llama (très nice) and have replaced the voltage limiting resistor in the bottom right with a 2.2K one. This did not alter tone and did reduce current flow a lot, the circuit now consumes 2.5 mA (this is without the unused gates tied to V+, so that may alter the consumption).

My LED needs a 2-3KOhm R to be nice and bright, which adds another 2-3 mA.

The entire effect would need about 5 mA of current. Is that a lot? I measured power consumption in my TS-10 Tubescreamer and it's at 6.66 mA (I'm not making this up... Scary huh?) and I consider the pedal not all that power hungry. I run it on battery quite a lot and have replaced it maybe once or twice in 2 years or so.

My question is:

What do you consider a lot of power consumption?

When would you consider dropping battery power alltogether and just sticking to wallwarts?

[niftydog]

well, anything over 10mA is getting pretty hungry, anything over 40-50mA is gonna be chewing through 9V batterys like the proverbial teenage boy through his grans apple pie - but it's still somewhat viable as at least the battery power option will get you through a gig or a sticky situation. Much more than that and it just becomes ridiculous.