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Battery Box Delimna! Suggestions???

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HockeyPop29

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I'm at the end of a PJ bass build where the guy I'm building this for had wanted it set up initially for 18 volt, so I had Warmoth include a double 9 volt battery box routing.

After hours upon hours of applying by hand black dye, silver powder (to bring out the awesome grain pores of the swamp ash body), and rubbing untold numbers of shellac and varnish to get this body juuuust right, he dropped a bomb on me. He has purchased the latest version of GFS RedActive EQ-switchable pickups, which the techs at Guitar Fetish have assured me are maxed out at 9 volts, and will burn up if I try to increase voltage or amperage. The bass looks far too nice (and the buyer wants easy access)  to just cut a piece of black acrylic and screw it over the hole with a battery stuck behind it, but the Gotoh box has only one set of leads coming out of it, so it requires 2 batteries, and the accompanying 18 volts, to complete the circuit.

Any ideas to make this routed hole take a single battery box and still look professionally done???
 
Rewire the battery box into parallel configuration to give you 9volts for a LONG time.

Be careful desoldering the terminals if there's plastic surrounding the terminal points on the battery box.
 
You have two options. You can wire the batteries in parallel, as Re-Pete suggested, or you can shunt one of the battery snaps and just install one battery. Don't make something this simple into an issue.
 
Wire em in parallel as suggested,  and charge him $100 extra for the "Hot Swappable Battery" feature
 
Thanks for all of the advice. I wasn't sure if doubling the current by wiring them parallel would somehow damage the pickups even though the voltage wouldn't change. Never too old to learn!

I have the wiring done, only waiting on the arrival of the Tusq XL nut to do the setup and post photos (I decided to opt for the black synthetic material for aesthetics rather than going with unbleached bone or brass). This being both my first active pickup build as well as as my first bass build, I am excited to hear it along with getting my customer's reaction.
 
Excess current available is just like a bigger bank account. It'll only get you in trouble if you're relying on your bank account for throttling your spending.

However... if you put two batteries in that are at different voltages, they can get quite warm as the stronger one will try to charge the weaker one.  If you can tolerate the 0.7v drop (usually only a factor at the end of battery life), then you could use a diode on each one to prevent the stronger battery from back charging the weaker one.  That's good practice, but people parallel batteries all the time.

You could wire them in series, and short one with a shorted battery cap/plug/wires. This would prevent someone from accidently installing a 2nd battery, but would allow them to switch to 18V later by just removing the cap. That might be the best solution, but I'd make it pretty clear. Like tape in the battery hatch or something they would have to remove intentionally to screw up.
 
HockeyPop29 said:
Thanks for all of the advice. I wasn't sure if doubling the current by wiring them parallel would somehow damage the pickups even though the voltage wouldn't change. Never too old to learn!
Click to expand...

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how electricity works. Placing two batteries in parallel means that the batteries can deliver more current, but current is something that has to be "drawn forth" by the circuit. If a circuit draws 1mA of current, for instance, it will only receive 1mA of current, regardless of how much current the batteries are capable of supplying.
 
To be fair, even fundamental facts like that aren't apparent to those who haven't received some education and/or experience from somewhere.

Besides, if everybody knew that, many Hollywood constructs wouldn't work, like torturing/electrocuting people with car batteries. How often is that meme employed, and how impossible is it?

You wanna hurt/kill somebody with a car battery, your best bet is to drop it on their head from 30-40 feet up. That'll learn 'em.
 
Maybe I'm just fragile, but I bet if I were to suffer having a car battery dropped on my head from as little as one foot, it would hurt like a mother.
 
Cagey said:
To be fair, even fundamental facts like that aren't apparent to those who haven't received some education and/or experience from somewhere.

Besides, if everybody knew that, many Hollywood constructs wouldn't work, like torturing/electrocuting people with car batteries. How often is that meme employed, and how impossible is it?

You wanna hurt/kill somebody with a car battery, your best bet is to drop it on their head from 30-40 feet up. That'll learn 'em.
Click to expand...

Haven't you seen Lethal Weapon 1??  You gotta wet the sponges first.
 
fdesalvo said:
Haven't you seen Lethal Weapon 1??  You gotta wet the sponges first.
Click to expand...

Actually, that was exactly one of the flicks I was thinking of. Just saw it recently again for the 39th time, and laughed at that scene all over again.
 
Just another day at the office, right?

Simulation_fail.png
 
So let me get this strait, putting wet sponges on my nipples and connecting them to a car battery ISN'T going to electrocute me?


Great, now I need to change my plans for Saturday night.
 
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