Busking power source

[Viajero]

Hello all,

I'm doing a show in Edinburgh this year, and somebody suggested busking during the day as a bit of a laugh. Two things occurred to me that I thought someone out there would have an answer to.

1) Is this possible in Edinburgh during festival time, or do you require a licence?

2) What kind of portable power solutions are there to allow me to use my amp on-the-go?

[Paul Cooke]

depends how many amps your amp needs...

I picked up a E:Can+ canverter from Tesco's car section the other week for £30.

Plugs into a cigar lighter socket and provides up to 200 watts of 240 volt ac.

I use it in conjunction with a large car "jump-start" battery-set I got given for my birthday... the ones you recharge using the mains and has a tyre inflater pump, lights and 12 volt sockets on it in addition to jump leads.

I wouldn't like to try driving more than a 50 watt combo with it though... as a 50 watt combo also wastes 50 watts just to produce 50 watts.

[el-gnomo]

I once had a busking rig that consisted of an EQ footpedal (9v battery) into a car stereo amp, which was powered by a car battery, and the output of that went into a small 1x12" cab.
It sounded great, and I'm tempted to do it again, maybe with a quad bike battery or something that's smaller and easier to cart around (i.e. fully sealed)

.......can't guarantee any of this was safe though !!!!!

el-gnomo

[Viajero]

Excellent. I shall look at car batteries etc immediately. Cheers guys.

[Alun]

This looks fun..

[url="http://www.roland.co.uk/guitar_room_catdet.asp?id=MICROCUBEBASSRX"]http://www.roland.co.uk/guitar_room_catdet...MICROCUBEBASSRX[/url]

But only seems to be 5w??

Cheers
Alun

[stingrayfan]

[quote name='Viajero' post='233646' date='Jul 6 2008, 05:00 PM']What kind of portable power solutions are there to allow me to use my amp on-the-go?[/quote]
You could hook it up to the nearest street-light like Ray-Von did in Phoenix Nights.

Shabba!

[Paul Cooke]

[quote name='Viajero' post='234403' date='Jul 7 2008, 07:13 PM']Excellent. I shall look at car batteries etc immediately. Cheers guys.[/quote]

you really want to look at Leisure batteries, not car batteries... car batteries are only good for short discharges like starting cars... leisure batteries are designed to discharge more slowly and have deeper cycles... ie, you can draw them down to about 15% charge left before having to think about recharging them.

I have a 120 Amp Hour one for my boat which I keep topped up over the week using a solar panel kit... It's the one I use with the canverter for running my laptop with and also powering my practice amp when aboard.

I also cart a 35 amp hour one about to use with my electric trolling motor. I use the trolling motor on my sailing cruiser for close-in maneouvering around my mooring... far safer than crashing into the mooring while trying to take the power out of the sails...

leisure battery capacities mean that a 120 amp hour one will supply 1 amp for 120 hours, 2 amps for 60 hours and so on...


Don't forget they're heavy...

There are standalone battery powered combo solutions out there...

take a look at the Pignose Hog 30:

[url="http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Pignose-Hog-30-Amp?sku=489056&src=3SOSWXXA"]http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Pig...mp;src=3SOSWXXA[/url]

I think you can get them in the UK as well.

[url="http://www.guitar-spares.com/index.html?lang=en-uk&target=d473.html"]http://www.guitar-spares.com/index.html?la...arget=d473.html[/url]

oh look... yet another dollar-pound rip-off... $160 against £135

[Viajero]

Yeah, there's a surprise. Nice shout on the leisure batteries.

To be honest, it's looking like the outlay and effort required just to go and play a few songs on a whim might puncture the sponateity of the enterprise, so I might give it a miss. Worth knowing, though, for future reference. If it happens, I'll just try and take power from a nearby shop, or perhaps just borrow an upright.