Greetings, all. This is my first post here ... please be gentle!
I recently acquired a cute little bass amplifier. It's a Silvertone BA Sx amp, which draws 26 watts and allegedly puts out 20 watts (10 watts RMS) through a 6-1/2"inch speaker. I've plugged it in and it seems to work as advertised.
A friend of mine is a bassist who wants to play her electric bass in camping venues where there aren't any electric outlets around. She's rejected the Pignose Hog 30 as too much for her needs ... too big, too powerful, too heavy, and too expensive. She only needs to accompany one or two acoustic guitars, and maybe a mandolin, all un-amplified.
It has occurred to me that the BA Sx might be the perfect amp for her if I could convert it to DC power. I've already played it powered from a car battery with a little Plug-in 100 W inverter without dramatic signs of failure, but that's a standard car battery.
I guess my questions to the group are:
1. Would it work using perhaps the sort of 12-volt lead-acid gel battery you see in home alarm systems or back-up systems, which typically push out 7 amps or so? How about two of them in parallel?
2. It seems it would be more efficient if I just bypassed the power transformer and rectifiers and tapped into the circuit that just fed it 12 volts (or close to it) directly from the battery, thereby eliminating any power loss from the transformer, along with the need for an inverter. Is this reasonable, and if so, what's the best way to find that point in the circuit? (Unfortunately, I have no schematic for the thing.)
3. Or would it make more sense to scrap everything but the speaker and the cabinet, and build a battery-powered amp from scratch, or from a kit that can put 10 watts RMS into the speaker? If so, can you give me recommendations for kits or plans that would let me do this?
In closing, I should add that my knowledge of electronics is fairly rudimentary, although I've built many kits and a few projects from scratch, using schematics that were provided to me. And I do know how to use a VOM and a soldering iron.
I recently acquired a cute little bass amplifier. It's a Silvertone BA Sx amp, which draws 26 watts and allegedly puts out 20 watts (10 watts RMS) through a 6-1/2"inch speaker. I've plugged it in and it seems to work as advertised.
A friend of mine is a bassist who wants to play her electric bass in camping venues where there aren't any electric outlets around. She's rejected the Pignose Hog 30 as too much for her needs ... too big, too powerful, too heavy, and too expensive. She only needs to accompany one or two acoustic guitars, and maybe a mandolin, all un-amplified.
It has occurred to me that the BA Sx might be the perfect amp for her if I could convert it to DC power. I've already played it powered from a car battery with a little Plug-in 100 W inverter without dramatic signs of failure, but that's a standard car battery.
I guess my questions to the group are:
1. Would it work using perhaps the sort of 12-volt lead-acid gel battery you see in home alarm systems or back-up systems, which typically push out 7 amps or so? How about two of them in parallel?
2. It seems it would be more efficient if I just bypassed the power transformer and rectifiers and tapped into the circuit that just fed it 12 volts (or close to it) directly from the battery, thereby eliminating any power loss from the transformer, along with the need for an inverter. Is this reasonable, and if so, what's the best way to find that point in the circuit? (Unfortunately, I have no schematic for the thing.)
3. Or would it make more sense to scrap everything but the speaker and the cabinet, and build a battery-powered amp from scratch, or from a kit that can put 10 watts RMS into the speaker? If so, can you give me recommendations for kits or plans that would let me do this?
In closing, I should add that my knowledge of electronics is fairly rudimentary, although I've built many kits and a few projects from scratch, using schematics that were provided to me. And I do know how to use a VOM and a soldering iron.