Exclude 9 volt connector

[Adamo]

I'm building a GGG Foxx Tone Machine and I'd like to exclude the 9 volt connector and only power it with the DC Jack. Can I just simply not include the connector during the build or is there some alternate wiring I would need to do?

Thx

[GibsonGM]

As long as your + and - go to the jack as needed, you're fine to do this...

[R.G.]

GibsonGM's answer is of course correct.

But the original post points something out - the use of batteries is becoming a luxury, not a necessity. In my day job, we often discuss whether we should put in a battery connector or not. Just recently, we have come down on the side of "Yeah, we better put one in. There are always people who will refuse to buy a pedal without a battery connector if we don't put one in."

The case for batteries comes down to:
- fewer cables to the pedal (two instead of three)
- quieter in some rare circumstances or with some very unusual pedals
- cheaper (for the first battery) than a good DC power adapter

The case against them is:
- most players don't use only one pedal any more, so the number of cables argument is specious
- there is at least one very quiet DC power adapter that is as good as a battery for all but some rare circumstances
- 9V batteries cost about $2.75 (here in Texas at least) each, in batches of 5 to 10. There are cheaper ones, and also more expensive ones. But for the cost of 10 batteries, you can get a power adapter that will run over 100 average pedals (literally!) for as long as you have AC power - and if you use an amplifier, you will have AC power except for street-busker situations.
- for busker setups, you can provide battery power through the DC power jack for the cost of hacking a battery-to-DC-plug adapter.

So the situation has tilted from batteries being the only good option back in the 1960s to being expensive and a pain to manage now. But there is always a group of customers who will have deep philosophical objections to not having a battery clip, so we put one in, knowing that it will almost never get used.

[aron]

Interesting. I think we are closer to the point where it will not be needed at all very shortly. Another advantage to not having a battery connector - smaller pedal. No need for the added space of a battery.

[armdnrdy]

Interesting. I think we are closer to the point where it will not be needed at all very shortly. Another advantage to not having a battery connector - smaller pedal. No need for the added space of a battery.

+1

I have never installed a battery connector in any of my builds for all of the reasons that R.G. and Aron outlined.

[electrosonic]

If you don't use a battery, then you don't need to use a switching jack to turn the pedal on and off - then you don't have to run your ground currents through the input jack.

I now just use mono jacks for input and output and wire the ground to the dc jack directly.

Any downside to that?

Andrew.

[Mark Hammer]

I'm curious about what happens in music stores when people want to try out pedals.  A battery allows the potential consumer to just take a couple patch cords, find an amp and guitar on the wall, plug in, and play.  When the pedal requires an external power source, there is the nuisance of finding an outlet to plug the wallwart into, sometimes the nuisance of finding the wallwart specific to that pedal, unless the pedal in question is part of some larger pedalboard that is set up for customers, and comes prewired for power distribution.

Apart from those pedals that need more current than a battery can provide, how do music stores deal with that challenge?

None of this is an argument for why someone here would need a battery clip.  But anyone who has a product intended for retail sale in stores has a set of considerations that folks like us don't have.  And one of those is rendering the "Could I try that one out?"-to-"That'll be $83.45, with tax" gap as efficient and nuisance-free as possible.

[karbomusic]

The case for batteries comes down to:

IMHO, the most important reason of all...

"It's showtime, something went wrong and a battery will save the day."

Anything I personally build for me, I omit the battery connector because I carry around one of those 9V battery to wall wart plugs around; but for anyone else, I put one in for the same reason I like a spare tire in my trunk. Otherwise I have no use for a battery except for emergencies. Eventually, I'll forgo the official internal battery connector altogether and just include one of the external deals with the pedal.

[karbomusic]

Apart from those pedals that need more current than a battery can provide, how do music stores deal with that challenge?

I worked music retail years ago. Basically, the battery is going to have a 50/50 chance of being dead anyway due to being in a music store and.... there is usually a box of PSA120s and the like behind the counter that naturally accumulate. That covers the ones that aren't already hooked up 24/7 which most do now for the most auditioned pedals and/or vendor display's like Roland now does with all that already built into the display.

[Mark Hammer]

Yeah, I would imagine those retailers that have narrow manufacturer-menus (e.g., Boss + Dano + EHX) would likely have a manufacturer specific pedalboard set up.  Where the shop carries a wide variety of manufacturers (and I'm imagining a small shop in town that carries a rather large list of boutique-ey makers), that might tend to preclude fitting the shop's entire offerings into a couple of dedicated demo pedalboards.

I know the student union building at my kid's university has a "charging station" in the lobby, with a variety of cables+connectors hanging from a central pedestal, so that every phone and tablet can get a helpful zap before class.  Do music stores have anything comparable?  I imagine something like a piece of channeling around the perimeter of the display area, just slightly above the level of the amps, with a bunch of power cables dangling from it and intermittently spaced.  The customer gets a pedal from the display case, strolls over, plugs the power connector in (and maybe there are color-coded stickers on the side of the demo pedals to match pedal to appropriate connector), and away they go; no battery, but no hunting around for a PS or an AC outlet.

[vigilante397]

Yeah, I would imagine those retailers that have narrow manufacturer-menus (e.g., Boss + Dano + EHX) would likely have a manufacturer specific pedalboard set up.  Where the shop carries a wide variety of manufacturers (and I'm imagining a small shop in town that carries a rather large list of boutique-ey makers), that might tend to preclude fitting the shop's entire offerings into a couple of dedicated demo pedalboards.

I currently work in one of those small town music shops, and it is a little difficult. Unfortunately I don't get to deal with this problem very often because generally the market for pedals in small towns is pretty slim. Everyone that knows what they're doing just gets them online. Before I started working there they mostly just carried Danelectro pedals, which come with a battery, and they were always dead. So now that we carry more pedals I make sure we have at least a couple wall warts floating around the guitar room. The main reason this works is because it's a small shop, so whenever anyone even looks at a pedal I can run over and talk to them, so if they want to try something out I can make sure it's plugged in right for them. Saves the money we would otherwise spend on batteries, makes the customer feel important, prevents shoplifting and possible damage to gear.

[peterg]

Interesting. I think we are closer to the point where it will not be needed at all very shortly. Another advantage to not having a battery connector - smaller pedal. No need for the added space of a battery.

Non switched power jacks can be used to save more space

http://www.smallbearelec.com/servlet/Detail?no=1362