Batteries, Love or hate 'em?

hugbot

God I'd love to be able to have so few pedals I just ran it all of batteries. No messing about with isolated power and extra cables. Just run an MT2 direct to the board or some shit.

d8m

Interesting fact relevant to thread.

Today would have been Alessandro Volta's 270th birthday.

Sassafras

Don't any of you care about the environment?

Beexter

Sassafras said:

It pains me to think of all the space you could save if you only had pedals designed without battery option.

I much prefer a power supply to batteries if I'm using a board but batteries are handy if I just want to use one or two pedals. Xotic have shown you can still make a very small pedal that will take batteries (I've got an SP comp and an SL drive) so I'm not sure there's much pedalboard real estate to be gained from battery free options...The environmental issue I do get though, so I avoid using if I can.

ICBM

Sassafras said:

Don't any of you care about the environment?

Very much, but the use of batteries in pedals is not a major contributor to the problem.

What car do you drive? Do you try to use it as little as possible, and always drive in a way to maximise fuel efficiency? Do you turn the engine off at traffic lights? How long on average do you keep one before you replace it?

Have you converted your whole house to LED light bulbs?

Do you travel by plane?

All these questions are somewhat more important to your environmental impact than whether you use batteries in your pedals…

(Rhetorical questions! Unless you want to answer .)

Do you use a valve amp, or solid-state?

Dave_Mc

ICBM said:

Do you turn the engine off at traffic lights? How long on average do you keep one before you replace it?

Surely having personal traffic lights at all is a bit wasteful, without replacing them all the time?

newi123

Sassafras said:

Come on, be honest, how many of you regularly use only 1 or 2 pedals?

I usually just play with an overdrive and a sparingly used delay. Into a clean amp with a strat with a humbucker and lots of use of the volume pot I can cover most bases! :-)  

Sassafras

ICBM said:

Sassafras said:

Don't any of you care about the environment?

Very much, but the use of batteries in pedals is not a major contributor to the problem.

What car do you drive? Do you try to use it as little as possible, and always drive in a way to maximise fuel efficiency? Do you turn the engine off at traffic lights? How long on average do you keep one before you replace it?

Have you converted your whole house to LED light bulbs?

Do you travel by plane?

All these questions are somewhat more important to your environmental impact than whether you use batteries in your pedals…

(Rhetorical questions! Unless you want to answer .)

Do you use a valve amp, or solid-state?

I agree that batteries are unlikely to kill off humankind but I see it as the general direction we've been moving for decades now. The way we've accepted disposability in such a complacent manner.

In answer to your rhetorical questions(ha ha) I am very conscious of the energy I use and try to minimise it as much as possible. I have no car just a 500cc bike that I've had for years, all my light bulbs are energy savers, I recycle religiously and I fly to France maybe once every 2 years.

I can sleep at night knowing that I'm trying to do my best to save mankind single handedly

:P

Oh, and my valve amps are really tiny as is my SS amp. I think the biggest amp I had was a Deluxe Reverb or maybe a Traynor 30 watter.

Sassafras

Dave_Mc said:

ICBM said:

Do you turn the engine off at traffic lights? How long on average do you keep one before you replace it?

Surely having personal traffic lights at all is a bit wasteful, without replacing them all the time?

Yes, but it's great being able to set them at green all the time. Takes hours off a long journey!

ICBM

You're doing pretty well on energy use.

Actually "we" are generally going in the right direction with newer technology, which is almost all more efficient than old tech - the problem is that there is more of it, and many more humans now have access to it, so cumulatively energy use is increasing rapidly.

Personally, very little pisses me off more than an unnecessary timed traffic light stop on my way home at night when no-one is on the other road. The waste of energy is infuriating, and I'm often tempted to just drive through, but you can bet there will just happen to be a police car which hoves into view the second you cross the line...

For what it's worth I rarely even take a pedal to an open mic these days either!

And I never change my guitar strings .

Sassafras

I think mankind can come to terms with you changing your strings every now again, wouldn't want your tone to suffer just for man's continued existence on the planet.

ICBM

Sassafras said:

I think mankind can come to terms with you changing your strings every now again, wouldn't want your tone to suffer just for man's continued existence on the planet.

No, I like the tone of old strings!

And strings cost money .

Dave_Mc

Sassafras said:

Dave_Mc said:

ICBM said:

Do you turn the engine off at traffic lights? How long on average do you keep one before you replace it?

Surely having personal traffic lights at all is a bit wasteful, without replacing them all the time?

Yes, but it's great being able to set them at green all the time. Takes hours off a long journey!

ICBM said:

And I never change my guitar strings .

Sweet, can I pretend I do that for the environment rather than laziness/incompetence at restringing?

Babones

I like batteries. I don't really like all the extra wires from power sources. That said, i'll use one or two pedals only, when i do and they'll be low power consumption. The other day, i changed the pedal in my Super Duper for the first time in about 4 years. I'm not sure it actually need it either.  >:D<