please delete duplicate post
Has anyone out there tried or come across any info of people powering pedals with different battery sources than the standard 9v battery.
Personally I'm looking for a lower profile option to make it easier to fit a buffer onboard a guitar so I dont need to route the pickup cavity- i was thinking itd also be cool to add a usb jack or have it easily removeable for recharging.
With all the different power requirements and the noise and cost of good power supplies. I figured this would be a topic discussed somewhere. I cant find anything though- can anyone point me in the right direction if youve seen this utilized or discussed on another forum?
Thanks so much!
Red Witch Pedals has their "Seven Sisters" line, which are all run by rechargeable 9v Lithium Ion batteries.
Only trick with lithium is its 3.7V a cell, so you need at least 3 cells, plus the circuitry to safely charge/discharge them (and a voltage regulator to drop the 11.1V to 9)
But yeah, some folks have done it.
If you have a strat or les paul, Fishman makes exactly what you're looking for. It's designed to work with their Fluence pickups.
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/FluenceStrBPWt
I suppose one could also use voltage booster to step up the 3.7 to 9V. Use a little coil or even a tiny transformer. You'd lose some battery efficiency in the process, maybe add some noise if you aren't careful, but it could work.
A minor note - I have one of the Red Witch Seven Sisters rechargeable mini pedals (the Scarlett Overdrive, which is a tubescreamer), and it uses a single Li-ion 3.7V battery and a charge pump. I traced the pedal for FSB and you can see pics of the innards and the schematic at http://freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=28299&p=263540&hilit=scarlett#p263540 (http://freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=28299&p=263540&hilit=scarlett#p263540) The audio circuit operates at about 5.8 V, and there is a regulator and charging circuit so you can run and charge it from a standard 9V power supply.
For an onboard circuit, you could buy a premade SMD board that would have a USB jack and recharge a Li-ion or LiPo battery. For example, sparkfun sells several of varying complexity at https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/28 (https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/28).
It's not particularly small, but I was running a pedalboard off a 9.Xv RC car battery.