TIP: heavy duty 9v battery clips from Radio Shack

[Steve A.]

I needed a battery clip to repair a pedal and stopped by RS only to find that they are selling a really nice 9v battery clip. Not the fanciest ones I've seen in pedals but much better than the cheap 9v clips that have been around for at least 40 years. Catalog #: 270-324 (BTW the front-on picture on the webpage does not do justice to the clip.)

Heavy-Duty 9V Snap Connectors : Connectors | RadioShack.com

Anybody care to tell us about the high quality battery clips that you've found? Thanks!

Steve Ahola

[dai h.]

hey Steve. I think I've seen "83-4" which look similar to one sometimes found in vintage pedals (old wahs?) :

http://www.keyelco.com/pdfs/M55p22.pdf

[Mark Hammer]

Or you can do this: http://hammer.ampage.org/files/DIY-snaps.pdf

[JoeM]

Very cool. Now I know what to do with those dead 9V batteries.

[Mark Hammer]

Note that the ones you want to use are the ones with a fibre top, rather than a plastic top. The plastic kind will melt when you try to solder leads to the contacts.

The other thing I'll note is that the DIY route gives you the freedom to have the leads exit the clip wherever you want; the middle, the end, 2/3 of the way along, etc.

[Steve A.]

The other thing I'll note is that the DIY route gives you the freedom to have the leads exit the clip wherever you want; the middle, the end, 2/3 of the way along, etc.

Not to mention all of the money that you will have saved! As long as you are making the custom 9v clips you could make up some without leads as "caps" to snap on your fresh 9V batteries to keep them from getting discharged.

Steve Ahola

[Mark Hammer]

A/DA had a pedal power system back in the day, when very few pedals had jacks for wallwarts, that would use the input jack. We are accustomed to the ring connector on a stereo input jack being ground/negative, but that's only because it is "the other side" of the battery.

What A/DA would do is provide a clip to snap onto the internal battery snap. That clip would shunt the pos and neg terminals on the snap so that the V+ wire from the board would now connect directly to the ring lug on the input jack, without any battery en route. That made the input jack tip/signal, ring/V+, shaft/gnd, and suitable for "phantom powering" via the input jack.

The package that A/DA sold had a bunch of short stereo patch cables that would connect the pedal input to a central station where the cable could puick up both the supply voltage and the signal from the preceding pedal.

Pedal powering has gotten a LOT simpler in the intervening 30 years.

[Steve A.]

What A/DA would do is provide a clip to snap onto the internal battery snap. That clip would shunt the pos and neg terminals on the snap so that the V+ wire from the board would now connect directly to the ring lug on the input jack, without any battery en route. That made the input jack tip/signal, ring/V+, shaft/gnd, and suitable for "phantom powering" via the input jack.

I've been thinking of using something like to provide power to an amplified dobro pickup. With a regular guitar you can change the battery reaching through the soundhole but it is a lot more complicated with a dobro. My idea was to have a phantom power box with a 9v battery in it- you would run a mono guitar cable to the amp and a stereo cable to the dobro. Since most onboard preamps use a stereo jack to switch the power on it would involve jumpering some of the wiring to bypass the stock battery clip.

Pedal powering has gotten a LOT simpler in the intervening 30 years.

Except for EHX!

Steve Ahola

[Matt P]

Or you can do this: http://hammer.ampage.org/files/DIY-snaps.pdf

I've made some of these before too,it works quite well.

Instead of using the bottom plate of the battery and gluing it on,I used shrinktubing and put around the connection,heated it with a soldering iron and a small knife to cut the holes for the terminals.Probably a bit more work involved this way.

[Mark Hammer]

Well, if its any consolation, your extra effort is not in vain. The bottom plate on some batteries can be difficult to glue on, or rather, glue on but not stick for very long. The heatshrink approach may be more effort but is guaranteed to work on all battery tops, where not all battery bottoms can be easily glued on.