Rechargeable battery pack for FX?

[Steve A.]

A good recipe for a pedalboard power supply is to go find a 12-16V cordless drill-driver. Garage sales are OK, but know what the battery packs cost first. Take the drill-driver, disassemble the thing and cut the handle+battery socket off the motor section. What you want is the socket. Glom this onto your pedalboard somehow. Arrange a regulator to make 9Vdc out of the DC coming out of the batteries. Now you can charge a battery pack, and run with it while the other battery pack charges. When you run out, swap.

The battery packs and chargers for cordless driver/drills are not cheap. I think that you do want to stick with one of the established brands since their replacement battery packs should be available for many years. However if you already have a cordless drill with two battery packs and a charger from a company like Makita you only need to find a junker drill (or other tool) for a few bucks at a garage sale or flea market as you suggest. Depending on the model and brand it might not be that easy to remove the socket without trashing it.

An alternative is the skinny little 2.5A-H sealed lead-acid battery. This would fit under the platform of many pedalboards and power them for a long time. For this one, arrange a socket somewhere on the PB so you can float charge the PB when it's not in use.

I have a small portable power pack used for jump starting vehicles which I'd been thinking of using as a pedal supply- but I keep misplacing the charger and after sitting around for 4 years it doesn't seem to hold much of a charge. Question: Can I charge it using a car battery charger, clipping together the red leads and the black leads?

BTW I have a suggestion for Visual Sound. The One Spot adapters were a great idea when they first came out but over the years many power strips have rotated their outlets 90 degrees which means that the One Spot can take up 2 or 3 spaces. So how about designing an adapter which would rotate the prongs 90 degrees? This could be included with new One Spots or sold as an accessory for something like $5 for the existing adapter out there...

The One Spot is pretty much the King of Affordable Chargers (i.e., not one of those fancy power bricks selling for $100-$200) so I prefer to use it even if it does hog 2 or 3 outlets...

Steve Ahola