DIY - External Phantom Power For Active Pickups

[idsnowdog]

Here is a diagram of what I did to create an external power source for my livewire pickups. My guitar didn't have room for the batteries so I needed to create an external battery compartment. This could be used to power many different types of active electronics.

First I will post the revised instructions from X-Raven and then the diagram. There is also a picture of how to modify the livewire schematic to remove the battery clips. Maybe this could get vaulted or added to the SD schematics?

I built an external battery box for my strat since I had no room. It's pretty sweet because I can have easy access to the batteries and have less weight and crap in my guitar. Here's how you build it.

Ingredients: (From radioshack)
Project wire
Package of 2 STEREO 1/4 phono panel mount jacks (The female end if you will) or one stereo and one mono plug.
Package of 9 volt battery clips
2 9 volt batteries
A project box or something that will be big enough to hold the above stuff.
A STEREO 1/4 cable as long as you want for your guitar (This is your new guitar cable)

How to do it:
Ok grab the soldering iron. Solder the black wire of one battery clip to the red of another. Solder the other red wire (that hasn't been soldered) to the ring lug on the phono jack (this will be the jack you connect to the guitar). Solder the black wire to the sleeve lug. Solder a blue wire from the tip lug of that phono jack to the tip lug of the other one (this will goto the amp). Solder a green wire from the sleeve lug of the first jack to the sleeve lug of the second jack. Connect up the 9 volts, and mount everything in box, make sure to lable the jacks to know which is guitar (STEREO cable) and the amp (MONO will work fine). Finally, open up your guitar and plug the 2 battery clips together, so the + ends are in the - ends or remove the clips and solder straight to the plug. Plug you guitar cable in, amp cable, and play away! By the way, a company is making a device called X-Bat that's gonna do the same thing, but I'm sure this is cheaper.