Topic: Battery life for the Church Audio 9100 pre

[illconditioned]

Chris, I bought my 9100 pre from you last june, would that be version 3?  Harold May

I would say its probably is if it has a red LED it will be a version 3.0
 One place to look is under the pad in the battery compartment. Some of them have a 3.0 marked in there some have it under the Church Audio label. And sadly some are not marked at all. It all depended on how busy I was when they were going under final assembly.

Chris

Hey Chris.  A nice mod might be to put a female 'banana' type jack on the case.  Connect to postive battery (through a resistor).  Then you could measure voltage on the battery from the positive connector to the shield of the miniplug.  No opening of package necessary.  I think Shure did this with some early versions of their preamps.  Useful for measuring both off and loaded voltages of the battery as well.  Hey, I might add this to my own preamp eventually.

  Richard

That would not work in my case because my input ground is isolated from my output ground and I am also using a split rail power supply. So between + and the virtual ground audio ground. Would only be 4.5 volts.  From + to my input ground would be +8volts. Not accurate for measuring the real voltage of my supply.

Chris

Whatever, put two connectors on their if you need to.  I'm just saying this might be a nice feature.  Or maybe an "option" customers can add-on for a few more dollars...

  Richard

[Church-Audio]

Chris, I bought my 9100 pre from you last june, would that be version 3?  Harold May

I would say its probably is if it has a red LED it will be a version 3.0
 One place to look is under the pad in the battery compartment. Some of them have a 3.0 marked in there some have it under the Church Audio label. And sadly some are not marked at all. It all depended on how busy I was when they were going under final assembly.

Chris

Hey Chris.  A nice mod might be to put a female 'banana' type jack on the case.  Connect to postive battery (through a resistor).  Then you could measure voltage on the battery from the positive connector to the shield of the miniplug.  No opening of package necessary.  I think Shure did this with some early versions of their preamps.  Useful for measuring both off and loaded voltages of the battery as well.  Hey, I might add this to my own preamp eventually.

  Richard

That would not work in my case because my input ground is isolated from my output ground and I am also using a split rail power supply. So between + and the virtual ground audio ground. Would only be 4.5 volts.  From + to my input ground would be +8volts. Not accurate for measuring the real voltage of my supply.

Chris

Whatever, put two connectors on their if you need to.  I'm just saying this might be a nice feature.  Or maybe an "option" customers can add-on for a few more dollars...

  Richard

You sound pissed off I hope not..

Anyway I think if someone is to lazy to take a battery out of my preamp and test it.. then nothing I do will help that. I could put in a voltage sensing led... But again everything costs money and everything eats up space inside my little box. it was a great suggestion.. I remember the red and black terminals on the back of the shure mixers I never knew what they were for.. Now I do 

[illconditioned]

Chris, I bought my 9100 pre from you last june, would that be version 3?  Harold May

I would say its probably is if it has a red LED it will be a version 3.0
 One place to look is under the pad in the battery compartment. Some of them have a 3.0 marked in there some have it under the Church Audio label. And sadly some are not marked at all. It all depended on how busy I was when they were going under final assembly.

Chris

Hey Chris.  A nice mod might be to put a female 'banana' type jack on the case.  Connect to postive battery (through a resistor).  Then you could measure voltage on the battery from the positive connector to the shield of the miniplug.  No opening of package necessary.  I think Shure did this with some early versions of their preamps.  Useful for measuring both off and loaded voltages of the battery as well.  Hey, I might add this to my own preamp eventually.

  Richard

That would not work in my case because my input ground is isolated from my output ground and I am also using a split rail power supply. So between + and the virtual ground audio ground. Would only be 4.5 volts.  From + to my input ground would be +8volts. Not accurate for measuring the real voltage of my supply.

Chris

Whatever, put two connectors on their if you need to.  I'm just saying this might be a nice feature.  Or maybe an "option" customers can add-on for a few more dollars...

  Richard

You sound pissed off I hope not..

Anyway I think if someone is to lazy to take a battery out of my preamp and test it.. then nothing I do will help that. I could put in a voltage sensing led... But again everything costs money and everything eats up space inside my little box. it was a great suggestion.. I remember the red and black terminals on the back of the shure mixers I never knew what they were for.. Now I do 

No, not pissed off.  I'm just suggesting ideas as they occur to me.  Since I'm not selling gear, maybe others can use them.  I'm actually trying to avoid using preamp boxes for this very reason - needing to check batteries.  Also having extra connectors that fail.  Most of the time my low profile rig is some mic (Sennheiser, or chopped AT822) directly into plug in power on Minidisc (for quiet shows, lower self noise), or Edirol R09 (for louder shows).  I could probably get better sound with the preamp, but my "organizational abilities" are somewhat limited once I get to the pub!

  Richard