The Hughes & Kettner User Forum

Would you like to react to this message? Create an account in a few clicks or log in to continue.
The Hughes & Kettner User Forum

The Unofficial guitar amp and cabinets forum for users of Hughes and Kettner products. We are not affiliated with Hughes and Kettner!!


    Onstage portable supply idea

    bordonbert
    bordonbert


    Posts : 1772
    Join date : 2015-01-28
    Age : 72
    Location : Southern England

    Onstage portable supply idea Empty Onstage portable supply idea

    Post by bordonbert Sun Nov 12, 2017 10:49 pm

    Hi.  With my penchant for fiddling and making up bits of kit I had an idea recently which might tickle a few of you.

    I'm always trying to cut down on the amount of wiring that is hanging around me when I play.  I'm always the one whose foot catches in a loop of cable and almost causes a disaster.  One particular thing which bugs me is the need to have mains at my feet with pedals.  I don't use a lot of them.  I start with two long cables with in-cable head amp buffers at the guitars, each into their own preamp box on the floor.  These feed into a simple selector switch with LED indicators to swap.  That is followed by a wah and then my own clean buffer and overdrive pedals.  So basically that is 2x12V + 4x9V.  They are all fed from a cheap switched mode PSU unit much as many people pay £100+ for and which is a plain old £15 model and does exactly the same job (if you know how to go about it).  The cheap PSU is fed from an 18V wall wart type raw supply.  I wanted to remove any need for mains.

    Nowadays the idea of using one of the popular mobile phone charging battery units is popular.  They only usually supply 5V albeit at high currents, so are not up to the job themselves.  You can buy USB cables with a built in Boost step up converter to take them to 9V and 12V to power your pedals direct.  I got my hands on some of these items, very cheap from China if you aren't pushed for time, and started to play.  Things didn't go to plan.  The cheap step up devices are very unreliable.  They usually have a minimum current requirement to be drawn by the load before they even start to work, have a maximum current draw which is very variable, and can easily be damaged if you don't take care of both of those.  So it was back to the drawing board.  Of course you can pay the music industry standard '3x the realistic price' for a specialist pedal one like the Pedaltrain Volto at around £120.  Even the ultra cheap Joyo version is £70.

    Ok, so a different line.  Could I get a larger 18V step up converter at high enough current to feed my existing PSU?  Well....  No, not from the mobile charger at least.  Then I was doing a bit of DIY and it hit me.  I already had a PSU at hand.  My cordless drill has an 18V battery!  So I tried to come up with a method of capping the battery so I could connect to it and power the SMPSU direct.  Not neat and tidy enough, and  don't even mention safety!  Then digging around on ebay I came up with the solution.

    I have now put a bit of money into this setup which I find neat, tidy, safe and reliable and very quiet electrically of course, and it does away with all long cabling to the pedals other than the feed to my amp.  You have a picture there of a unit I found online which converts a Makita 18V power tool battery into a mobile phone charger with two 5V USB outlets.

    Onstage portable supply idea Psu_ca10

    I bought one for £11 and opened it up for a look see.  Inside it was neat with a battery connection block and a USB converter PCB, but with plenty room to fit an additional flying lead direct to the battery terminal plates with a DC outer positive 5.5x2.1mm plug on the end.  I didn't even have to remove the USB PCB so I can still charge my phone when playing, and that is the height of cool!  (Whaddya mean like Hell it is.)  And it is ideal electrically.  It's powerful, at 3000mAh it will power my pedals for over a day.  It's small but industrial, after all it's going to live in a gig bag and will get dropped or trodden on at times.  I bought the bits brand new so put a little money into it but it's still much cheaper than some other solutions which aren't as good.  I only needed to gently file a semicircular hole in each half of the cap at the seam with a rat's tail file.  I made it small enough to pinch the cable which I sleeved with two layers of heatshrink sleeving.  With a small cable tie tight around the cable just inside it is really sound.

    So, to ebay once more and I came up with a mid power battery and charger pair brand new for £40.  And there it is!  You can see it in the pictures.  The parts are self explanatory.  The battery cap is as it came with the exception of the cable which I fitted in around half an hour.  And you can see, the whole stage setup is neat and tidy now.  Now to alleviate the setup cost I plan on replacing my ageing drill with a cheaper Makita one, probably second hand as there are hundreds without batteries and chargers online for a few pounds.  And I have the stage thing for the cost of the cap.

    Onstage portable supply idea Psu_bi11

    Onstage portable supply idea Psu_al10

    Anyone else have similar projects?


    _________________
    Newcastle Brown, can sure smack you down
    You take a greasy wh*re, and a rollin' dance floor
    You know you're jailhouse bound!

    Rock On Humble Pie

      Current date/time is Thu Mar 28, 2024 9:20 am