MANGLERMIXER

I try to be at one with nature as much as I can. I also don’t like spending lots of hard earned benjamins. So to best achieve this I have been using rechargeable batteries. More info after the jump.

This is after about 2 weeks worth of gigs. Mostly from powering wireless transmitters. The Fruit Loops were probably my snack on the way to location.

Now, I haven’t done the math on this but that cup is full of expensive batteries. 8 pack of those Energizer lithium AA’s are like $18. Those 9 volts? like $3 a piece. So yeah, thats a good bit of money that I’m tossing down the drain for each shoot, not to mention harm to mother earth. Now of course I don’t toss these in the garbage, I take them to Wholefoods’ battery recycling bin, which I’ve been known to fill up.

So what have I done to less mangle my wallet and mother earth? Well first off I power my sound bag(mixer, recorder, wireless receiver and hop transmitters) through my bags battery distro system through an NP1 style lithium ion battery.

This little bugger will run a basic kit; mixer, 2 wireless receivers and hop for about 2 days. Versus 4 AA’s in my mixer, 2 9 volts for both receivers and 2 9 volts for hop transmitters which I’d probably get about a half a days use out of. So to power my bag with individual batteries it would cost about $54 a day. Or $115 for this NP1 battery.

Bag power is usually the first thing you want to secure with renewable energy. That covers everything except for talent transmitter. That can get a little tricky. Some transmitters use 9 volts and some use AA’s. Good renewable 9 volts come in the form of the iPower kit.

4 batteries and a charger run about $110. Best investment ever. Perfect for the Lectro UM style transmitters and Comtek systems.

But some of my smaller transmitters require AA batteries. Previously I had been using the Energizer Lithium AA’s but after spending $18 a pack on those, although they do run for a long time, it started to become a bit wasteful. Enter the Powerex batteries and charger.

The charger has all kinds of cool options for getting the most out of your batteries.

I did a lot of reading online from users experiences, especially from JWsound, on their good reports and usage of the Powerex system. So I pulled the trigger and did some upgrading. Now, my kit is made up of all rechargeable batteries. At one with nature.