Hey battery dudes.

Can we leave our pedals plugged in (assuming they are true bypass and turned off) and not worry about the battery being drained?

I've always unplugged them after a gig or practice just incase. I would love if I could just leave everything plugged in. Can I?

Nope, ya gotta unplug 'em. The circuit in a pedal is always "on". The footswitch just chooses whether it's in the signal path or not. The stereo input jack switches on the battery power, no matter if the pedal is "on" or not.

Head

Back in the day....I had a few f/x that would only be happiest on batteries.

I made a simply relay circuit and used stereo input jacks for those patch cables so that the ring was grounded when my power bar was on. (ie. the patch cable was wired like a regular patch cable but with a thin wire from the ring running to my relay which closed when the pedalboard was on)

The nice part is that typically in my experience, the pedals that work best on batteries also tend to drain them slowly

Andy

Headshot is generally right - most true bypass pedals do not use the switching to actually turn everything off, only the LED. So the rest of the ciruit is still "running", and draining the battery. However, with a typical OD or fuzz pedal, most of the current draw comes from the LED itself - i.e. the LED uses two or three times as much power as the actual effect circuitry. Which is why you can BYPASS the effect and get greatly increased battery life.

With a pedal that sucks a lot of power, like a chorus or delay, bypassing it won't make as large a difference.

Damn, that's disappointing.

I read that on TGP and I was hoping it was true.

Thanks Head and Dave.

Troy. I used to hate unplugging my pedals as well...

My lazy a** just took one of those cheap Boss/Roland daisy chains and cut the plugs off and plugged them into the pedals when they weren't being used as when the ac plug is plugged in the batteries aren't being discharged...my only problem was remembering to plug em in!!

Chow,
Seegs

quote:

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Originally posted by Seegs:
Troy. I used to hate unplugging my pedals as well...

My lazy a** just took one of those cheap Boss/Roland daisy chains and cut the plugs off and plugged them into the pedals when they weren't being used as when the ac plug is plugged in the batteries aren't being discharged...my only problem was remembering to plug em in!!

Chow,
Seegs

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I might just have to do that!!

That's a really good idea Seegs. I guess it doesn't bother me that much, but still...lazy lazy lazy!

It sure beats pluggin and unpluggin...made to order with the lazy man in mind!!

Chow,
Seegs

quote:

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Originally posted by Seegs:
Troy. I used to hate unplugging my pedals as well...

My lazy a** just took one of those cheap Boss/Roland daisy chains and cut the plugs off and plugged them into the pedals

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I do the exact same thing (except I didn't cut up my daisy chain)

quote:

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Originally posted by Seegs:
Troy. I used to hate unplugging my pedals as well...

My lazy a** just took one of those cheap Boss/Roland daisy chains and cut the plugs off and plugged them into the pedals when they weren't being used as when the ac plug is plugged in the batteries aren't being discharged...my only problem was remembering to plug em in!!

Chow,
Seegs

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Seegs that is a good idear.

And soo easy.Cool!

I made some short cords that have a battery clip on one end and a Boss style connector on the other end and I mount a battery clip on my board close to the pedal and I just plug the battery in through the power jack on the effect. When I'm done I disconnect the batterys by popping off the clip. That way I don't ever have to pull my effects off the board to change batterys.

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