Silly active pickup question

[alex1fly]

I have two of these in a bass guitar: https://www.emgpickups.com/bass/extended-series/35twx.html

The battery aspect is getting old. Unplug it every time, occasionally clean acid/corrosion if the battery is in there a long time because I don't play this bass terribly often.

But, the $200+ I'd have to pay for a good set of passives will sure buy a lot of 9 volt batteries.

So is there anything else I can do? Can you convert these to passives or power them in a different way? EMG says no, but I thought I'd check with the gurus here too. https://www.emgpickups.com/pub/media/Mageants/p/o/powertips_tricks_0230-0190c.pdf

 

[idsnowdog]

The easiest way to get past having to swap batteries is to build a phantom power box. What you do is just wire straight to the ring on the stereo jack and then use a stereo cable for power/signal to the guitar. The one I built has a switch for 9v or 18v operation and I only need one phantom power box for six different guitars. Basically, the way it works is the tip of the stereo cable is signal, sleeve is ground, and ring is what delivers power. On the other end of the power box there's a mono jack to split the signal off from the power. See the schematic below. In ten years of running my guitars at 18v I haven't changed the batteries once and when I put my multimeter on it still reads 16v.

https://forum.seymourduncan.com/foru...gd-emg-content

Otherwise there's this product which is basically the same as what I built.
https://guitarelectronics.com/external-battery-system-for-guitar-bass-active-electronics/

 

[Blille]

If you sell them with the wiring you may be closer to your $200

 

[JB_From_Hell]

You can get a Fishman lithium battery pack for less than $100. Charges via usb, lasts a long, long time per charge. I’ve had my guitar with Fluences for about a year, play it a lot, and I doubt I’ve charged it 10 times.

 

[PFDarkside]

You can get a Fishman lithium battery pack for less than $100. Charges via usb, lasts a long, long time per charge. I’ve had my guitar with Fluences for about a year, play it a lot, and I doubt I’ve charged it 10 times.

I agree with this.

Who cares about batteries. Is it the tone you want? If you want a different tone try different pickups but if the EMG sound like you want power with one of the two methods above.

 

[Spaghetti Bolo]

I made a phantom power box. Its powered from a supply so theres no swapping batteries ever.

 

[Rex_Rocker]

I use standard Radio Shack rechargeable batteries in all my active guitars.

I personally don't think unplugging the guitar every time I'm done playing it is an inconvenience. Like, at all. But that's just me.

 

[alex1fly]

Thanks all. Maybe a rechargeable 9volt is the way to go. Weird that I've had two 9 volts go bad and get acid everywhere in the battery cavity. Might just pull 'em. Thanks for the thoughts!

 

[Blille]

Thanks all. Maybe a rechargeable 9volt is the way to go. Weird that I've had two 9 volts go bad and get acid everywhere in the battery cavity. Might just pull 'em. Thanks for the thoughts!

Not sure. You won’t get 9v out of rechargeables.

https://www.talkbass.com/threads/rechargeable-9v-batteries.966488/