Defective Battery Snap?!

[Be-Kind-Rewind]

I'm fixing a friends pedal and diagnosed that it is power related. I plugged in a power adaptor and it works but the battery won't. I checked inside to see if anything is wrong but there is no visible damage or weak connections. Could the battery snap be defective?

[aron]

Use a multimeter to test continuity of the snap to the power point on the board. If it's good, the problem is on the board or a dead battery etc...

[Be-Kind-Rewind]

Cool. I'm pretty sure it's just the battery snap.

[Hides-His-Eyes]

If it's just one of those floppy ones, they're fecking useless and it's probably that.

[waltk]

If it is the snap, you can easily make one that's much better than the cheesy ones you can buy.
(Can't give credit, cause I don't remember where I first heard this.)

Take a dead 9-volt battery and tear it apart with pliers, screwdriver, and/or a vise. Vises are great for a gentle crushing action that will pop the seams of the battery.  Watch your fingers as the metal edges of disassembled batteries are extraordinarily sharp.  Watch your fingers as the metal edges of disassembled batteries are extraordinarily sharp.  Why did I write this twice?  Because I've almost ended my guitar-playing on the sharp edge of a battery case.  Use tough gloves, or a vise.

Pull the "snap" part off of the top, and the same-sized plastic piece from the bottom.

Solder a red and a black wire to the underside of the snap.  I use 22 gauge, as it is durable enough to handle repeated battery replacements.  Remember to put the black wire on the positive battery terminal side (because the negative side of the battery will mate with positive side of the snap you are creating).

Route the wires to either the end or the side of the snap - depending on how the one you're replacing is oriented.

Mix up a small batch of quick-cure epoxy, wait 'til it's not particularly runny,  and coat the underside of your new snap with it (nice and thick , so the wires are covered.  Place the plastic botom-cap from the battery onto the epoxy, and hold it together with a small spring clamp until the epoxy finishes curing.  It's OK is a little epoxy oozes out the sides; you can trim it off later.

I usually make these in batches.  Save your dead batteries until you have a half-dozen or so, and make them assembly-line style.

It should look something like this...

[Mark Hammer]

I've been doing that for ages, and would direct you to the PDF on my site if I could get to it (currently disabled).

What I will draw yours and everyone's attention to, however, is that you need to watch how thick the combination of upper and lower halves is once you factor in epoxy, hot glue or whatever.  It can result in a snap that is thick enough that a 1590B will not physically accommodate the snap and a 9v battery in the space you've left for it.  This is especially true if you situate the battery spot between the switch and the front skirt of the box (where the screw insert areas at the corner can eat up precious space), and if you use anything other than those slender "classic" Everyready carbon-zinc batteries or something comparable.

Not a problem if you plan for it, but just be forwarned that despite how great an idea it is to recycle old battery parts for sturdier battery snaps, it is not a foolproof panacea.  Final snap thickness matters.