Way back in February/March, I discussed putting together a board for the various guitar pedals that I have purchased since the beginning of the year. The board consists of two logical parts: the pedals and the power system. The latter is composed of a chargeable battery and a power distributor. The last few band practices have been marred by problems with this system; even though I charged the battery for at least an hour in advance, I couldn't get any power into the distributor and from there to the pedals.
Last Saturday I devoted some time to establish where the problems were. The first seemed to be that the battery wouldn't work if its feeding cable was connected (even though the other end was not connected to anything), so of course I disconnected this cable. Then I had problems connecting the power distributor to the battery: on one end of the cable was a normal USB male plug that connects to the female socket on the battery. But the other end of the cable seemed to be a female C-type socket that would sit on the male C-type plug on the power distributor. I had trouble making this connection work but eventually it did. As a result, I obtained a nice (to my ears) swirling sound via a combination of the multifunction box and the tremolo pedal.
I resolved to do something about this situation; today I made my monthly order from Temu that included a different power distributor. This one has the feeder cable directly connected to the box so there should be no similar problems in the future. Of course, I was shown a picture of the distributor that I already have and something tickled my brain.
This distributor had a C-type female socket for power entry, exactly the same as my telephone. So why did my distributor have a C-type male plug? It occurred to me that maybe the plug had detached itself from the cable and was stuck in the socket. So I got a pair of long-nosed pliers, put them around the plug and pulled gently; the plug came away revealing the C-type socket that had been there all along.
So I cancelled my order for a new distributor and threw away the ruined cable. Now I seem to be one cable short, but in fact there is a cable that will serve double duty. In advance, this cable will be connected on one end to power and the other end to the chargeable battery; this will charge the battery. When I am playing, the same cable will be reversed, so that the USB end connects to the battery and the C-type plug connects to the power distributor*. Problem solved!
Over the last week, I wondered how I could use this battery with my pedal board, but as I was living under the misconception that the power distributor had a C-type plug and not a socket, there seemed to be no simple way of connecting the battery to the distributor. But now that the C-type socket has been revealed, this small device can be connected directly to the distributor, eliminating the need for the chargeable battery that is stuck on the pedal board.
I think that I'll leave the pedal board as it is, with the chargeable
battery on-board, but that I'll take the little battery along with me in
case of emergencies.
*Post-script from a few days later: I should have checked that the cable can do double duty before band practice. It turns out that the plug does not fit the power distributor socket so I had another evening without pedals. I do have a spare cable that does connect on both ends, so this is going into the gig bag.
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