benadrian wrote: Fri Jul 07, 2023 5:18 pm
There were a couple companies making rechargeable power banks with 9v out. Pedal,train, for instance. I can't seem to find any in production. I think Mission Engineering and maybe some other companies make a 5v to 9v DC/DC converter. Then you can use a USB power bank and power guitar pedals. I've neer used one.
I've been looking up these battery powered pedal power supplies again. Here's what I've noticed.
The major brands seem to be staying away from this. Pedaltrain made one and discontinued it. Voodoo Labs never made one, as far as I know. Mission Engineer seemed to get into it, but it seems like their products are all "out of stock."
I can see why they would avoid this. DC to DC conversion can be very noisy. Every pedal company seems to have different tolerances. It's just too unpredictable to get something that will work in all cases. One motivated loudmouth on the internet can tank the reputation of a company.
But the budget companies and relabeled import brands are all over this. A basic search on Amazon gave me these two.
https://www.amazon.com/JOYO-4400mAh-Rec ... 0871RLGH3/
https://www.amazon.com/lotmusic-Isolate ... 09MTKLN62/
They probably work fine in most cases, and no one would expect them to work perfectly in all cases.
I found something else interesting. There are companies that make 5vDC USB-A to 9vDC boos -style cables. The conversion is done in the USB jack body.
https://www.amazon.com/current-Negative ... 07GD54Q66/
https://www.amazon.com/Farsense-Adapter ... 09NSHL19Q/
These seem like they'd be incredibly hit and miss, but they are cheap, and might be great for the player who already owns some power banks and only has a 2-4 pedal pedalboard with very basic pedals.
I love the idea of this, but it makes sense while battery-operated power supplies will never take off. If someone has a big board, it's already a good bit of work. It's also probably worth a fair amount of money, and the player is fine spending money on a nice power supply unit to get reliable and noise-free performance. Most stages have front of stage power now. It's not that big of a deal to plug in one power cable.
But I'm a weirdo. I don't really want a pedalboard, but I don't want to use and swap batteries. I don't want to have to take the bottoms of my pedals off. I want my pedalboard to be smaller than a sheet of paper and not have to deal with any wall warts... so I'll probably buy a couple of these and see how it goes.
