Topic: V3 power 1 more time.....

[paulr]

did a little more research and it doesnt look like I should try to orun it 12 volt.  I would have to send it back to Grace etc.....
anxiously awaiting the power supply from grace

[F.O.Bean]

did a little more research and it doesnt look like I should try to orun it 12 volt.  I would have to send it back to Grace etc.....
anxiously awaiting the power supply from grace

What is your question You can switch a v3 from 6v to 12v by opening the v3 up and moving some switches. Its VERY EASY and ANYONE can do it, not just technical people

[goodcooker]

did a little more research and it doesnt look like I should try to orun it 12 volt.  I would have to send it back to Grace etc.....
anxiously awaiting the power supply from grace

What is your question You can switch a v3 from 6v to 12v by opening the v3 up and moving some switches. Its VERY EASY and ANYONE can do it, not just technical people

Don't listen to that advice. There are a bunch of internal jumpers on the V3 that change various settings (reference the owners manual) but the power supply jumpers are not recommended to be be changed by the end user.

from the owner's manual

"DC SUPPLY VOLTAGE JUMPERS Jumpers J26 and J27 select the operation Voltage to be 6 or 12 Volts DC. These jumpers should be moved ONLY by a qualified technician. Consult the factory for voltage change information"

If the people who made it say to send it back to them to change the voltage requirements I would def do that. Give them a call and see what they say.

I had a V3 for a while. It was set for 6V and I ran it off a 6V SLA and a 9V DVD battery.

[Chuck]

Those jumpers only control when the low battery warning comes on. They don't determine whether you can run it on 6v or 12v. You can use either voltage and any in between including 9v.

[paulr]

My thread / question, did start out a little longer.  My real problem I guess is power consumption.  I run earthworks SR77 and I when I bought them several / 10 years ago Nutter (Sonicsense) warned me about that.......  I had most recently been running them SR77>HDP2 and using a NP1 12 volt battery to run the HDP2 w/ phantom.  I got great results running in excess of 6 hours with it never switching into the back up AA batteries.  The AA option alone was requiring battery change at set break or sweating it out moving toward 3 hrs. run time.

SO, wanting to change it up again I recently, bought a V3 here in the yard sale and got a great deal I might add...
Now I am faced with battery issues again.  The guy I bought it from sent it with an old Oade SLA 6v battery that would cause the V3 low battery light to come on at about 2 hrs.  I was like..... OK here we go again...
I looked around here a little to get a feel for it and then went to Grace's website.  I orderd the cable and Tekkeon battery recomended.  Due to 4th of July and leaving for some Furthur shows it didnt get to me in time to give it a whirl.
In a panic I charged up mu old Eco charge 6 volt and ran a test run at home.  I got about 3 hours with gains way up and thought... OK this will get me by, and it did.  But...... about 2:45 low battery warning light is coming on.......
So I guess......  I am wondering if the tekkeon 6v operation is going to work out or if I should consider trying to go to 12v.
am I going about this the wrong way?

[tedyun]

Chuck answered your question very clearly.

You can run the V3 on any voltage from 6V to 12V, ie., you will get the same performance if you run at 6V or 12V (or 9V). Using your Tekkeon, you can feed it 6, 7.5, 9 or 12 V, but by feeding it 12V, you are just draining your battery faster.

If you sent it to Grace to change it from a 6V unit to a 12V unit, they just calibrate the unit so that the low battery light will come on if you are below 12V. Right now, with your unit set at 6V, you can feed it anywhere between 6-12V, and the light will only come on if the battery is starting to get low. So I recommend to keep it t 6V.

If you send it in to get it calibrated to 12V, you can feed it anywhere between 6-12V, but the low battery light will be come on at 6, 7.5 or 9V (even though the V3 will be running fine).

With your SLA, I am not sure how long these thing typically last, but it sounds like the battery is dying if you aren't getting the performance you are expecting.

I routinely run my V3 on a Tekkeon at 6V. I have not timed the thing but it has lasted longer than 4 h with plenty of juice left.

My thread / question, did start out a little longer.  My real problem I guess is power consumption.  I run earthworks SR77 and I when I bought them several / 10 years ago Nutter (Sonicsense) warned me about that.......  I had most recently been running them SR77>HDP2 and using a NP1 12 volt battery to run the HDP2 w/ phantom.  I got great results running in excess of 6 hours with it never switching into the back up AA batteries.  The AA option alone was requiring battery change at set break or sweating it out moving toward 3 hrs. run time.

SO, wanting to change it up again I recently, bought a V3 here in the yard sale and got a great deal I might add...
Now I am faced with battery issues again.  The guy I bought it from sent it with an old Oade SLA 6v battery that would cause the V3 low battery light to come on at about 2 hrs.  I was like..... OK here we go again...
I looked around here a little to get a feel for it and then went to Grace's website.  I orderd the cable and Tekkeon battery recomended.  Due to 4th of July and leaving for some Furthur shows it didnt get to me in time to give it a whirl.
In a panic I charged up mu old Eco charge 6 volt and ran a test run at home.  I got about 3 hours with gains way up and thought... OK this will get me by, and it did.  But...... about 2:45 low battery warning light is coming on.......
So I guess......  I am wondering if the tekkeon 6v operation is going to work out or if I should consider trying to go to 12v.
am I going about this the wrong way?

[JasonSobel]

If you sent it to Grace to change it from a 6V unit to a 12V unit, they just calibrate the unit so that the low battery light will come on if you are below 12V. Right now, with your unit set at 6V, you can feed it anywhere between 6-12V, and the light will only come on if the battery is starting to get low. So I recommend to keep it t 6V.

while most of your post was correct, the part I quoted above is not entire true.  The low battery light does more than just let you know that you're low on power, it is also designed to have a shut-off switch (to save your battery, because a fully depleted lead-acid battery is not good for the life of the battery).

with the V3 calibrated to 6v, the low battery light will come on at 5.75 V, and the shut-off is set to 5.0 V.  so below 5V, the unit won't run any more.
with the V3 calibrated to 12v, the low battery light will come on at 11.5 V, and the shut-off is set to 10.0 V.

So if you get the V3 calibrated for 12v, the unit won't even turn on if you feed it less than 10v.  You can feed it 11v and it'll work just fine, but the low battery light will be on the whole time.

However, if your V3 is calibrated for 6v, you can feed it anything between 6v - 12v, and it'll work fine.  but the low battery light and shut-off feature won't work if you're feeding it 7v or 9 v or whatever.

regardless of what voltage you feed it, there is a voltage regulator in there that drops the voltage to 5v (I think), so the operation is identical no matter what voltage you give it (though it gets hotter if you give it 12v, as more energy is wasted and given off as heat).

So if you have an choice and are worried about battery life, your best bet is to give it 6v.

[Hypnocracy]

I have a couple of 7.2v RC batteries...would it be possible to calibrate the low battery and shut off to match this discharge graph...



I thought I had heard low Battery light and cut off could be adjusted....

[JasonSobel]

I have a couple of 7.2v RC batteries...would it be possible to calibrate the low battery and shut off to match this discharge graph...

I thought I had heard low Battery light and cut off could be adjusted....

email Grace Design.  If it's possible, they are the only ones who can do it.  But the Low battery light and shut-off mechanism was designed with sealed lead-acid (SLA) batteries in mind, so they might not be able to calibrate it to your RC batteries (which are most likely NiMH batteries, but might be lithium).

[paulr]

I see there are a few differences of opinion ,so in summary, and please correct me if I'm wrong....

I can run the V3 on my 12v NP1 battery without opening it up or changing anything.  Set in 6 volt mode (as is) it will run even as the battery drains down passed 11v.  The only thing that will be a little wonky is the low battery light will not know when to come on.
I want to give it a whirl at the Vibes today.

[dnsacks]

Paul:

Another though -- sealed lead acid batteries hate to be fully (or close to fully) discharged and lose a fair bit of their capacity as they age (or are allowed to discharge).  I see from the above that both of your SLA batteries appear to be  a bit on the older side.  You might want to start by getting a new SLA and seeing what your run times actually are -- you might be pleasantly surprised.  Also, there's nothing "magical" about an ecocharge or oade battery.  If you carefully pry the top off of the ecocharge, you'll find that it's wired into a standard 6 v sla using crimp connections -- find a replacement battery of the same size, plug connectors into the terminals, glue back (or tape) back on the  ecocharge cap and you'll be as good as new.

[paulr]

thanks everyone

[paulr]

So...   I charged up the MP3450 in excess of 4 hours first charge.  I disconnected it after charging it and put it away planning to run a test the next evening.
So whatever life had brought and whatever else was going on, it was about 4 days until I was able to get back to run my test.
I set up my rig Earthworks SR77>GraceV3>TascamHDP2.   Playing one of my recordings on the home PC, I turned the gains way up on the V3 until the meters indidcated somewhat similar to where I would run it at a show....
I set the MP3450 to 6v setting ran the V3/phantom for in excess of 5 hours....... Low Battery light never came on. Checked the power level on the battery and it showed to only have discharghed less than 1/3 of its charge.
Hurray !!!!

[SmokinJoe]

I've run SR77's with V3 a lot.  The Earthworks draw a lot more phantom power than most mics... like 10 or 12ma compared to 2-3ma for most other mics.  So battery times will be shorter.

For regular evening shows I use 9V DVD batteries, and unless a battery is on it's last leg, it will go 3 hours, even with Earthworks. With DVD batteries the V3 low battery light should never come on, so go by the DVD batteries.  I use the DVD batteries because I use the same thing with my R4's, so it's handy.

I've also got a bunch of old 6V SLA's, which I use for festivals where I save the DVD batteries for the R4's.  Sometimes in the middle of the day on the side stage there are bands that I really don't give a shit if the battery dies or not , so I will run the SLA's and push them to the limit.  I've had SLA's run for 6 or 8 hours, with AKG's or Gefells, and without the A/D.  Once the low battery light comes on I don't panic, I frequently run for another set, and I think I've gotten 3 hours with the low battery light blinking.  That's primarily a function of the individual battery of course.

If you run a 12V SLA, the V3 will draw the same amount of current (milliamps) as a 6V SLA, and the extra wattage just goes into waste heat.  12V doesn't get you anything, unless you have a bunch of 12v batteries and want to use them.  Otherwise don't bother.  If I used 12V batteries, I wouldn't send it back to Grace and get it recalibrated, I'd just carry a small voltmeter.

I'm probably going to buy a couple more 6V SLA's and rebuild my dead ones. Last time I looked they were something like $15 for 12000 mah.  Heavy, but if the bag stays in one place for 12 hours a day, I can live with it.

[paulr]

Thanks Joe !!!