Sans Battery

[Phend]

Hello all:

Scrolling thru the build pictures I see very few effects with batteries in them.
All with a DC jack of course.
Has the battery gone by the way of the horse for power ?

Thanks

[Fancy Lime]

What do you mean? I put horses in all my pedals. Except 1590A, those only fit a pony. Or a small donkey if you're on a budget.

[marcelomd]

I remember an old pickup truck ad. I think it was for a Nissan. The guy asked if your truck had horsepower or ponypower. In portuguese it sounds way better.

Anyway. Some companies say they don't use batteries because "climate change". I think the real reason is physical space.

[radio]

The power consumption of a 2 transistors fuzz is ridicolous , compared to a digital delay.

Also today you have powerbanks for pedalboard if you want, so I don't see a necessity

for 9Volt batteries anymore even if some pretend your old fashioned fuzz face will sound

better with an alkaline battery

[GibsonGM]

Mine will take either battery or power supply.   I use batteries all the time.

[Fancy Lime]

Alkaline? Never, say I! Never! That newfangled sorcery is the Devil's! 'tis zinc-carbon what goes in a Fuzz Face or you'll have to answer to the Inquisition!

[Rob Strand]

Hello all:

Scrolling thru the build pictures I see very few effects with batteries in them.
All with a DC jack of course.
Has the battery gone by the way of the horse for power ?

Thanks

There's a slow movement away.   You wouldn't see those nano size pedals if people *had to* stick to batteries. 

There's some small cost savings and it gives you more layout options when you don't have to find a home for the battery.

I tend to make allowance for batteries in devices but I never use them  .   Occasionally I'll test a pedal with a battery.

[pacealot]

I still have had the need to not be physically tied to two different power locations in the room (I was going to say "on the stage" but I haven't been on one of them in over 12 years), so I seem to still require batteries. (Yes, I've heard they've invented a device called the extension cord, but I'm not even up to the thermionic valve yet so give me a little more time to adjust to these other new-fangled gizmos.)

And if one's power source isn't as clean as it oughta be, then yes, that can be heard in a fuzz versus a battery, and with all the schmutz all over everything already, I'd rather have one fewer source of it. That's if it's all the same to everyone else, of course...

[ElectricDruid]

Yeah, I gave up on the idea of batteries for power some years ago too.

When I was younger, batteries were a big deal and I used to select ICs based on their power consumption to keep the circuit in a range where batteries would provide a decently long life (e.g. TL064 over TL074 every time, and there were even better options from a "low current" point of view, if you could ignore the noise...). I was aiming for only a few milliamps per circuit. That seems crazy now, in the same way that 200KB as the maximum size for a webpage seems (which was what we aimed at when I started doing web design!). Let's just say the goalposts have moved a lot!

Now? - Batteries?! Why?! Expensive, inconvenient, and they alway die at the wrong time! Why would you use them?!?

[PRR]

...Yes, I've heard they've invented a device called the extension cord, but I'm not even up to the thermionic valve yet...

The extension cord is a lot older than the valve. Say you want to iron the laundry, with electricity(!), over by the window. The usual sole-source of juice was a lamp-socket in the center of the ceiling. You unscrew the bulb, screw the extension cord to the ceiling socket, screw the iron-cord to the extension cord. (Yes, irons were fitted with screw-plugs well into the 20th century.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_AC_power_plugs_and_sockets#Early_history



https://oldchristmastreelights.com/2001_site/dating_hints_and_helps,_page_2.htm

[pacealot]

Well I guess it's back to the trouser press for me!

[Invertiguy]

I use a separate power supply pretty much exclusively so I never include batteries anymore. Ditching them gives you a lot more freedom with internal layout and makes top-mounting jacks easier, which is a plus for use on a pedalboard.

[aron]

Not to mention that batteries are much worse than they were before. Do you know that alkaline batteries from the 80's would hardly leak? I know because I had a few that still worked.

Now, it seems like every battery I forgot in a device, leaks. Really lame.

[GGBB]

Even when pedals take batteries they can be a nuisance to change if you have to unscrew the back to get inside. And if you use any typical pedalboard where the pedals are velcroed down, it's even worse (though I'm sure very few people if any use a pedalboard but not a power supply).

[ElectricDruid]

And if you use any typical pedalboard where the pedals are velcroed down, it's even worse (though I'm sure very few people if any use a pedalboard but not a power supply).

The people that do have a "battery-powered" pedalboard are probably using some massive lithium powerbrick thing to run everything, rather than individual batteries. Or maybe a 12V car battery and a solar panel?!

[Fancy Lime]

And if you use any typical pedalboard where the pedals are velcroed down, it's even worse (though I'm sure very few people if any use a pedalboard but not a power supply).

The people that do have a "battery-powered" pedalboard are probably using some massive lithium powerbrick thing to run everything, rather than individual batteries. Or maybe a 12V car battery and a solar panel?!

Solar panels? Lithium whatchamacallits? Ugh, kids these days, I'm tellin'ya.

[Phend]

0.00739 horse power hour = one 9 volt battery hour
That might be just one hoof of a horse.?

[soggybag]

Who want to buy batteries, or find out there's a dead one because you left something plugged in.

Without the battery wiring is easier, less parts, and there's more room in the enclosure.

[PRR]

9V@10mA just may be in range of a mouse or rat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleiber%27s_law
https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-get-the-horsepower-rating-for-other-animals-elephants-oxen-mice-etc/496421/2
"How many horses does a hamster produce, anyway?" ".....about 1/2072 hp." --- (0.36Watts)

[amptramp]

I had a job one time where I had to design a power supply giving ±15 VDC for a bank of amplifiers used for an infrared detector used with InSb photodiodes and although the amplifier used low-noise op amps with some power supply rejection, it was considered a good practice to keep the supply noise as low as possible.

I designed and tested it and got 33 nV/SQRT Hz which is better than some op amps.  Since the load was constant, I decided to run the reference diode off the output to avoid power input noise sensitivity but that imposed a problem:  when the poser is first switched on, there is no power to the reference diodes, so the circuit would do what it was intended to do and give a multiple of the reference voltage, which was zero at startup.  I solved this with a reisistive divider from the input that was diode-ORed to the reference on the output side.  Once the voltage came up, the diode was reverse-biased and the reference source was immune to noise on the regulator input.  The regulator element was an op amp set up with the reference on one input and the output through a divider on the other.

I could easily improve on the noise level now because I was using two LM113 bandgap reference diodes in series for double the voltage but SQRT 2 times the noise.  Even then, there was a better choice: the LM399 subsurface zener.rated at 6.95 volts.  Its noise is 75 nV/SQRT Hz but this can be filtered and it doesn't need the amplification factor of 6 that the pair of LM113 references did.

With a little care, you can design a power supply where the noise is low enough that a battery does not really do noticeably better and you eliminate the problem of having to find new batteries while you are on tour.  Even something like a Tillman, which has no power supply rejection, could be run off a well-designed power supply with no apparent increase in noise.  Don't even think about 3-terminal regulators for this - their noise level is a couple of orders of magnitude higher.