Topic: Weird Littlebox battery issue

[yousef]

My Littlebox seems to be very picky about the 9v cells it accepts.

At the moment I have an unused 9v that I have checked with my voltmeter (9.3v) but which the LB refuses to fire up on. The same cell powers my SVU-2 (which uses the same model of battery housing) without issue.

Another battery from the same batch (ie same manufacturer, bought on same day, packaged in the same box) is apparently 8.88v and powers both boxes fine.

The LB has been a little flaky at times, sometimes needing to have on/off switch flicked a couple of times before powering but never as consistently as this.

I wonder if this has anything to do with a mod that a previous owner performed to allow external battery packs - soldered a jack connector to the connectors on the back of the battery tray. But I unsoldered these on arrival and I'm not sure how this could account for one battery consistently working and another (brand new one) not doing.

I also wondered if it could be minor variations in the physical size of the battery causing the inconsistency but directly connecting the terminals with the contacts makes no difference.

Any thoughts? Obviously the ideal thing would be to ask Jon to give it a once-over but (as ever) I'm hoping to avoid losing it for the duration of a return journey across the Atlantic plus running the risk of incurring duty charges.

[yousef]

Thanks for that.

Looking at the terminals inside the battery tray they do look significantly duller than the (much older) ones in the SVU-2. I've been meaning to renew the tray for a while - looks like now is the time.

Hoping that the switch isn't part of the issue - I'm far too fat of finger and short of temper to do anything other than the simplest soldering tasks.