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Warwick Rockbass, battery only lasting a month. Any experts out there?


Subthumper
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Hi folks, bit of a puzzler this. I have a warwick rockbass with active pickups and eq. The battery is only lasting a month, however I have conducted a few tests and found that the barrel Jack is ok and that the connections are correct and that no current is flowing from.the battery when the bass is unplugged. What I have found though is that the current draw is 100mA which I think is rather high. Looking at the pickups they appear very similar to EMGs so going by their figures I'd be expecting about 1000 hours of playing time from the battery. I'm suspecting a fault in the actives and yet the bass sounds great, both pickups, one pickup, eq, no distortion, nice clean full sound and no noise.
I have a bass with an EMG jazz pickup, and an MEC P pickup and the battery lasts years.
Has anyone else experienced this or maybe know if this is normal behaviour?
Any info welcome.
Thanks for reading
Cheers Just

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Following Howiebass' suggestion, unplug battery and measure resistance between battery clip terminals. Also measure the current draw with each pickup disconnected in turn, then both. This will give some more indication where the issue lies.

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  • 2 weeks later...

From experience and also looking at [url="http://www.talkbass.com/threads/how-much-current-does-your-bass-preamp-use.892831/"]this thread on TB[/url] I would say that that was a huge current drain, 10-100 times what you'd expect. I don't know how easy diagnosing the cause would be though, you might be better off just putting in a new preamp.

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Is it an older Rockbass? You could have a look at this thread on the Warwick forum: [url="http://forum.warwick.de/showthread.php/3140-9volt-battery-dies-very-quickly"]http://forum.warwick.de/showthread.php/3140-9volt-battery-dies-very-quickly[/url] and [url="http://web.archive.org/web/20070806104704/http://www.warwickrockbass.com/news/46.htm"]http://web.archive.org/web/20070806104704/http://www.warwickrockbass.com/news/46.htm[/url]

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This is what I've been experiencing with my Sterling S.U.B Ray4, although I don't even get a month out of a battery, I get about 4 hours. I emailed Brian Martin at Praxis and his diagnosis was that something is completing the circuit and causing it to drain. Maybe at the preamp, maybe at the jack. Thomann have had it back a month and still no word from them.

I'll let you know when I hear from them - chasing it up today - and be sure to keep us posted on your RB.

Edited by Funky Dunky
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