Battery-powered portable amp

[CelticDude]

Hello all,

Is anyone using a battery-powered portable amp with their electric mando? I'm thinking it would be fun to have a small amp for sitting outside, or visiting, or maybe even a seisun. The obvious choices are the Pignose Hogs, or the Roland MicroCube. Anything else I should look at.

Thanks, DWP

[Richard Singleton]

I just picked up a black Mandobird on ebay a couple of weeks ago and have been researching the Roland Micro Cube to buy to use with it. However I just came across a Vox DA 5, which seems to have good online reviews, and may end up with that instead. I am really a newbie as far as electric instruments go, just plan to play it at home, enjoy using the onboard effects, and half the time will probably be using headphones when I play.

[Tom Wright]

Those are useful ready-made choices. I would also suggest considering a custom rig--the amp "pedal" from Electro-Harmonix in either 22W or 44W nominal size has a separate power supply, like a laptop. So you could run it off a rechargeable battery, like a couple of 12V ones for the 44 Magnum. It needs 2 amps at 24 volts, (48 watts at peak drain), so you would need a battery set with 2 amps times however many hours you intend to cover.

Two 12v 9 amp/hour batteries would provide 4.5 hrs of full power. (This is pretty much a motorcycle battery.) For comparison, a car battery is usually around 40 amp/hours or more.

One would need a speaker, but that could be really small for some venues, like practice or session. You can drive a 12" or multi-speaker cab just fine with these little amps. I have one and have chosen a 6.5" speaker I will mount in a small ported cabinet. I'll make the little thing out of 1/4" braced ply, so it will weigh only a few pounds with the speaker, one of the neodynium-magnet super-light designs. It's an Eminence AlphaLite:
http://www.usspeaker.com/alphalite6a-1.htm
Speaker cabinet dimension design apps can be found online, and you just input the numbers from the specifications:
http://www.kbapps.com/audio/speakerd...ors/index.html
My goal is a travel amp, but this could also be a good battery amp.

[chriss]

I use a Hodad with quiet instruments at our local Irish session. This is pretty small but is MORE than capable of putting out enuf volume at less than 1/2 gain and 1/2 volume setting to make my O-hole octave mando, and a quieter regular mando, heard. We often have 6-8-10 fiddles, a couple guitars, whistle, banjo, pipes, etc etc etc -- it's a big group and a VERY loud environment.
Danelectro DH1 Hodad Mini Amp $40-50
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listi...seller=&colid=

I don't use a preamp. The pickup is a Radio Shack door buzzer piezo soldered to an endpin jack and glued under the bridge. Yeah yeah yeah, low tech, but LOW COST and also astonishingly good sound. People comment on the tone and then are floored to know it's a $3.72 door buzzer inside.

The amp's tone is nice -- obviously not magnificent but pretty good, which is just amazing given its tiny size. I've had a couple positive comments from others that it's nice to be able to hear the sound of the octave in particular blending in with the rest of the session.

This little amp runs for hours and hours on a 9-volt. Our sessions are 2 hrs and I can't remember replacing that battery for like 8-10 sessions??? Long enuf ago that I can't remember.

[CelticDude]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll look at them when I get home from work. Good to know someone is using an amp at a session. I'm not quite sure about the etiquette, but I'd really like to bring my Jon Mann octave. I suppose I should just ask...

[Chief]

I've got a pignose. Don't use it too often, but it has come in handy when power wasn't available. Sounds pretty good. What sold me on it was that it had built in rechargeable batteries. So you don't need to keep replacing batteries. Also works plugged in.