Topic: jb3 internal batts SUCK!

[mmmatt]

Ok, last night, I'm taping the Radiators at the Abby in Chicago.  This venue is notoriously tough to tape, but I clamped onto both sides of the upper balcony rail about 10' in front of the stage and maybe 6' over the stage floor, and about 20 ft. apart.  Sort of nonconvential using cardioid caps, but it worked.  By far, the best mic-only recording of my life.  
   So anyway, 1/2 way through the 1st encore my jb3 goes dead.  I have 2 internal batteries that were new in March.  I left it run during set break because I left my rig for awhile and didn't want to miss the start of the 2nd set, but even still the unit was on less than 4hrs!  That just sucked!  The best wav yet, and my jb3 batts take a shit!  Thank God I had my hacked car cable, and my svu meeter visable.  I run the meter off the jb3 so if it goes out, that means the jb3 isn't putting out a signal.  I noticed right away and, hooked up my hacked car adaptor quickly.   I only missed about 1 or 2 miniutes I think, but that is more than enough to piss me off.  Fresh charge on them costly little bastards too.  Has anyone else had their jb3 batts croak so soon?

Matt

[F.O.Bean]

that sux, did you cycle them when you got them??

[mmmatt]

Yup,  first time was full charge up, full drain down, full charge up.  You don't have to change any settings on the unit for use with 2 batt's do you?
Matt

[F.O.Bean]

what are your settings on tho, is your remote on or off??? how long does your light stay on??? any other settings you notice may have been changed???

did youdo a disc cleanup??? that erases all personal settings, thats why i just reformat, so tyhe remote and stuff may have been on


does any of that ring abell??

[mmmatt]

what are your settings on tho, is your remote on or off??? how long does your light stay on??? any other settings you notice may have been changed???

did youdo a disc cleanup??? that erases all personal settings, thats why i just reformat, so tyhe remote and stuff may have been on


does any of that ring abell??

Actually, I don't think I have ever turned off the remote thing.  I left it alone in that regard.  The light is only on for a few seconds.  My drive is about 75% ful... maybe that effects it.  I wonder how much juice that remote thing takes.  When I first got it, to do my first drain, I hooked up to a cd player and recorded 2.5 hrs on one batt.  I was expecting to do a little more after the battery cycled a few times.  I'll check on the remote thing.  I also upgraded firmware since my first test.  I was also confused that when I ran off 2@ 3000mAh rc batts I was only getting 6hrs with jb3, and ua5, when fozzy got 15 with a 7.2Ah 12v... I'm going to check it out later tonight.  Not a big deal for next weekends festi, because I'll have 110 the whole weekend, but it will be a huge issue the rest of the summer!
Thanx Bean!  +T Any more thoughts let me know.

Matt

[F.O.Bean]

ummm, that draw w/ the jb3/ua5 soundz about right, 3000mah, is 3amp so 2 of those batts would be 6 amp, and a lil more to gte to 7.2amp would equal about 15 hrs if ya had 2x3000mah batts and a 1600mah batt

[AT853rxwh]

Gotta make sure that the IR port is off, and if the drive had a bunch o stuff on it, its possible that it had to hunt around looking for room to put data.  If you know you are going to be recording for that long, make sure NOTHING else is on it, that you do a clean up on it, and make sure when you are done you turn off the ir port...  

[Brian Skalinder]

Just to mirror what others have said, yeah - I believe the IR remote sucks a good amount of juice (though don't know exactly how much), and a full drive definitely will draw more power as it has to seek more to find open sectors on your HD (again, don't know exactly how much).

I'd turn off the IR, clean up your disc, and run some tests at home under controlled circumstances to see if you get a significant improvement - no surprises in the field, that way.

[BCostigan]

I tested my JB3 today with2 bats.  Got just about 7 hours.  My IR was off and I had about 5GB on the HD when I started. YMMV.

[mmmatt]

thanks brian,
actually, my ir was off... I guess I did turn that off before.  No time to screw around with it before I go out of town next week, so I'm not going to sweat it for now.  I did dump 30gb off the drive, but I just deleted files and did a reset... Is that good enough, or is there an actual "disk cleanup mode?  
   Who knows, maybe I didn't get a full charge like I thought.  Could be the 3/4 full drive, and maybe that is a difference between the 40gb and the 20gb units?  Now that I think of it, I bet the bigger drive sucks more juice.  I believe most here have the 20gb.  I'll tinker more in a few weeks.  I'm planning on filling that sucker next weekend, but I'll have 110 power, so batts are not an issue for now except as playback.  
Thanks again,
Matt

[mmmatt]

I tested my JB3 today with2 bats.  Got just about 7 hours.  My IR was off and I had about 5GB on the HD when I started. YMMV.

is your's a 20gb?

[jkoch]

most i've recorded was 5 hours w/ ir off and 10gb out of 20 free. the batteries didn't die.

[ChrisV]

Yep, pretty much what everyone else said.   Definately make sure the IR is off.  But also take into consideration if you got your headphones turned up(or plugging in the SVU monitor it may be sucking up a little bit).

And with LI-Ion batteries they get up to something like 90% charged fast but that last 10% takes a while to charge...I believe they are still trickle charging even when the charger indicator turns off(don't assume 100% charged right when it goes off).

[BCostigan]

I tested my JB3 today with2 bats.  Got just about 7 hours.  My IR was off and I had about 5GB on the HD when I started. YMMV.

is your's a 20gb?

Yep.

[F.O.Bean]

the headphones thing shouldnt matter, ive done some testing when i first got my jb3 and w/ headphones on 25, i still got 6.5 hrs easily, try cycling it again, and if it continues, sounds like some bunk batts, or a single bunk batt!!

good luck, besides, thgese things are menat to have headphones all the time