So the battery went dead when you hooked it up... BEFORE you turned anything on?
The 1st one did power it while hooking up the rig, but not when I turned the pre on the 2nd time
The 2nd one testes fine, and as soon as I turned the pre on, it was dead
Can you confirm that nothing in your rig draws power until it is turned on? Your cable just runs from the lion to the vms and nothing else?
I would assime not, as the power switch is set to "off"
Are these batteries known to work with other rigs, etc?
I do not have any other gear handy, but I can test next show with others, not sure when that will be
I'd troubleshoot it with a dvm. If you plug a bat in and it trips, I'd unplug that cable from the battery and immediately measure the resistance the battery is seeing on that cable. I'm guessing you'll see a short (possibly inside the vms).
While testing, continuously measure the resistance the battery would see if plugged in while you wiggle and stress each connection. You will probably need some clips to hold the probes or have someone do it. Wiggle the cabbles slowly and watch for any shorts or variations.
Unfortunatley all of this is way over my head. I will admit I am not an engineer, but I will check with another friend of mine who is on this list and uses these batteries an lives 30min away to see if he follows. He is also the one who pushed me to used these with my VMS since he had success.
When is the last time you were able to power the vms via external battery?
September 13th, I even labeled that battery as a possible bad one (as I have 3 or 4 of these).
I ran the same 2 show after show after show this summer with no problems. Several people here blames by Radio Shack cable, so I grabbed a cable from Ed, which was what I used Wednesday night.
The PreAmp was sent back to Schoeps and was given a 100% bill of health in December, but it has been used about 30-40 times since then, about 1/2 with the Wal-Mart battery.
Thanks!