Battery powered ukulele amplification...

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My new favorite inexpensive battery powered sound system, The Samson Expedition Escape. This puppy is LOUD AND CLEAN! Up to 20 hours on a single charge. I ran mine hard yesterday for 3 hours and two of the three green battery charge lights lights were still lit. I'm thinking real world it would run 5-6 hours on a charge at almost full power. Very light, as it weighs only 8.5 pounds 15.75” X 10.5” X 10.5” makes for very small footprint. It is speaker stand mountable, for more coverage. The 6' full range driver and 1” compression driver give it exceptional frequency range bandwidth. It has built in bluetooth, a 1/4” input and a 1/8” input. There's a USB jack to charge your phone at 1 AMP/HR capacity. The carrying handle cavity will hold a smart phone or MP3 player. The 1/8” input would work for Keyboards or Active pickup acoustic instruments. I used an old Samsung Galaxy II for backing tracks through the 1/8” jack. I then used my Samsung Galaxy S III microphone app through the Bluetooth, as the S III has an exceptional condenser mic built in. I plugged my passive pickup 'ukulele into my belt mounted Line6 Pocket Pod and then into the 1/4” input. It performed like a champ. I could pack the entire system into a backpack. Ric

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+1 for the Samson Expedition series.

I have an Expedition XP106. Four inputs; combo XLR/6mm jack, Line in throug either 3.5mm or 6mm jack, USB in for Samson's wifi mic and bluetooth each with their own volume control. Amp rated output is 100W and Samson claim 20 hrs on a full battery charge. Sound quality is excellent and there's plenty volume.
 
...Samson Expedition series. Amp rated output is 100W...

Correction, the amp is rated on the Samson web site at 30 watts, they have a higher end model that's 105 watts. Maybe the peak output is 100, but continuous is 30.


8 tenor cutaway ukes, 3 acoustic bass ukes, 8 solid body bass ukes, 8 mini electric bass guitars

• Donate to The Ukulele Kids Club, they provide ukuleles to children's hospital music therapy programs. http://www.theukc.org
• Member The CC Strummers: https://www.youtube.com/user/CCStrummers/videos
 
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After work today, I searched Youtube for nonstop ac dc greatest hits and paired my smartphone to my Samson Expedition Express and walked down the street a half mile to my car. People in their cars at the stop signs were looking around everywhere to see who was playing the loud music. This puppy is LOUD and CLEAN!!! Ric
 
After work today, I searched Youtube for nonstop ac dc greatest hits and paired my smartphone to my Samson Expedition Express and walked down the street a half mile to my car. People in their cars at the stop signs were looking around everywhere to see who was playing the loud music. This puppy is LOUD and CLEAN!!! Ric

I bet you were popular! :)
 
Nice Condenser Mic for Vocals and Instrument

I thought I would pass this on to folks that like a miced sound but don't want to use two mics (vocals and inst).

I use the Nady Spc-25

You can position the mic about 4 - 6 inches away between your soundhole and mouth and it will pick both up. It runs on 1 AA battery for over 10 hours, so you dont need phantom power on your amp.

I bought one to use with a fender mini passport. I connect to the mic channel and dial in a little reverb. I have been very pleased with the sound. Plus it makes for quite a compact rig.

I run the mini off of a 12volt rechargable lithium ion battery pack and use a lithium ion AA in the Nady so it is all rechargable. I've played 5 hours on a noisy street without running the battery out.

The only drawback to using a condenser is that it will feedback at highr volumes. The nady would work well with the battery powered amps in this thread.
 
I have been using this Nady Audio MM14FX battery powered mixer for over a year, now. It runs on one 9 volt battery and can also use a standard effects 110VAC wall wart. With four high impedance inputs and one high impedance output it works well with battery powered PA speakers. I bought 4 quality high impedance microphones at Fry's to use with it and my small Samson Expedition Escape powered speaker. Using a small amount of the mixer's built in echo effect and sharing each microphone for two musician's vocals and instruments we have successfully performed at local farmers markets and street fairs on all battery power. This is important, since many of these type venues charge $100 bucks+ to plug into their power which is sometimes several hundred feet away from tour location and shared by multiple vendors always tripping the circuit breakers.

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This new concept is a game changer in battery technology, where you can refill the batteries acid for a full charge in seconds or minutes:

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https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2017/Q2/instantly-rechargeable-battery-could-change-the-future-of-electric-and-hybrid-automobiles.html
 
My latest battery powered PA system uses a Bose S1 Pro and a Behringer Xenix 1002B 9 channel battery powered mixer. I get about 6 hours on a charge at loud volume on the S1 Pro and about 3 hours on 1the Xenix 1002B on a set of 3 9V NiMH rechargeable batteries, so I carry extra batteries for the mixer for longer sets. The S1 Pro has a built in 3 channel mixer for solo or small 2 piece combo bands. Sound quality is superb and a second S1 Pro can be daisy chained from the first for more coverage. A bass guitar can also play through the S1 Pro.

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It's good to hear your positive review of the S1. I plan to get one, and then decide if I keep my L1 Compact or sell it to buy a second S1.

How does the bass sound through it? I'd also be using the S1 with a piano/keyboard.
 
My latest battery powered PA system uses a Bose S1 Pro and a Behringer Xenix 1002B 9 channel battery powered mixer. I get about 6 hours on a charge at loud volume on the S1 Pro and about 3 hours on 1the Xenix 1002B on a set of 3 9V NiMH rechargeable batteries, so I carry extra batteries for the mixer for longer sets. The S1 Pro has a built in 3 channel mixer for solo or small 2 piece combo bands. Sound quality is superb and a second S1 Pro can be daisy chained from the first for more coverage. A bass guitar can also play through the S1 Pro....

Hi Ric,

Thanks for the update.

I wonder if you can power that mixer using a car or motorcycle battery (which would have longer runtime in Watt-Hours) than a set of 9v batts, and using a cigarette lighter 12v-to-9v adapter plug? (which would go into where you plug in the normal 110v AC to 9v DC wall adapter on the mixer with the round barrel plug)

Not sure on the amp limit of these things, but if that mixer is able to be powered by 9v batts for a while, the amp load is likely to be low enough that a garden-variety 12v-to-9v adapter plug that has a 7805 regulator chip and heatsink, aka a 'buck convertor' should be able to give you a lot longer runtime than swapping out some 9v cells.

Of course an SLA 12v battery is going to cost you in weight, but maybe it's worth exploring?

You'd also need a charger for the 12v batt at home. Not sure if you explored this in the past, so sorry if I am asking a question that you've already answered.

There are also lithium ion battery packs that can do 12v, like for power tools, that have both a high amp limit as well as high watt-hours, that might be able to be adapted with that same 12v-to-9v cable and some alligator clips (or some other attachment method to the battery pack), and you usually get 2 batt packs in the nicer kits as well as a charger...

just thinking out loud here...
 
The wall wart for the Xenix 1002B mixer has 2 outputs - 16VAC and 3VAC, Booli. A 12VDC battery could be used with a sinewave inverter, but that would add to weight and trips to the car. I have plenty of NiMH rechargeable batteries to keep the show going. Spare Lithium Ion batteries can be charged inside the bottom compartment of the Bose S1, too. I like the sound, portability, size and weight of this system. Setup and teardown time are greatly reduced. Ric
 
Good for you Ric if that system works for you.

I don't want to be rude but I just want to say for the thread that this system is complete overkill for general busking and only applicable if noise restrictions aren't in place where you are and your free to perform for a reasonably sized audience. Better for a group but a group will need a decent space to perform in.

If noise restrictions are in place then a Roland AC-33 is more than loud enough to get you into trouble all on its own. Currently I'm plugging an ISK CM-60 battery powered condenser microphone into my AC-33 as a 1 microphone solution for voice ,ukulele and foot-tap. It works surprisingly well.

I may replace the AC-33 at some point with a Behringer MPA40BT to get an 8" speaker instead of the 2 small speakers in the AC-33. The power of the MPA40BT will be complete overkill but it will be just about getting a clearer sound from the bigger speaker.

You really don't need to be that loud to busk and being too loud is a hinderance rather than a benefit.
 
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