Rechargeable

[andy jackson]

This question may have been asked before, whilst placing an order for £150 worth of pp3's I thought to my self 'self why dont we take this money and buy a few sets of rechargeable batteries instead?' surely this would save money and time. or have I overlooked something? am I likely to go dead half way through a show?

 

Andy :)

[bruce]

I'm guessing these are for radio mics...

 

It might save money, but not time :)

 

In general a rechargable cell will not have the same capacity as a decent alkaline battery, although technology is improving very quickly...

 

So you'll be changing them more often, and you've got the tedium of recharging. Plus their discharge profile is different - they tend to "die" very suddenly.

 

Personally, I might think about using them for rehearsals etc, but for a performance, I'd use a fresh cell. A decent alkaline pp3 can cost less than a pound.... In context, that's really not a lot of money.

 

Bruce.

[Jivemaster]

Some kit doesn't like rechargeables as the voltage is lower, so auto battery-low indication doesnt work. A reasonable compromise (as used in the forces ) is to use rechargeables for training and prime cells in action. Low tech NiCds were about 20% of the capacity of a prime cell of the same size. With NiMH and LiIon cells the capacity may even be better but the charge criteria are strict.

 

Use Fresh PP3s for shows and the cast offs for rehearsals, or rechargeables

[dan slv-tech]

Personally, I never use rechargeables, there not reliable enough for TX/RX. YOu can buy Duracell procells for about 70p each and you can get 10 hours out of one of them.

 

you can buy them from CPC,FARNELL,RS

 

Rechargeables have a knack of not charging well and when used heavily ie radio mics inevitably one min your be fine then the next it heads a dead cell and your left with a singer who cant be heard

 

Dan

[paulears]

can you point me to procells at 70p each please

[bruce]

can you point me to procells at 70p each please

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Well, I get procells at around that price via Onecall - http://onecall.farnell.com - which is the CPC/Farnell range as offered to the Higher Education market via the national electronics components purchasing contract. If I remember correctly it's about 80p per unit if you buy in boxes of 10, dropping to about 75p if you buy more than 50..... and free next day delivery. Batteries are one of the "special products" which get a rather good discount....

 

There's also apparently an academic deal on procells with www.h-squaredealelectronics.co.uk. I've never used it, but I believe it comes out about 7.20 for 10 units. No free delivery for orders under 30 pounds.

 

Both of these deals are for higher education only. Schools, colleges, government etc will have similar contracts.

 

Might be worth contacting squaredeal and finding out their "normal" price....

 

Bruce.

[BlueShift]

I would never use rechargeables for a performance. but you can go and grab a whole bunch of dirt cheap, no-name brand pp3's for the rehearsals, and then break out the more expensive procells for the show

[slim_mcslim]

I can get procell PP3's for around 70p each - not sure on exact pricing as it kinda varies month on month, this is from a battery wholesaler, only downside is minimum order of £800 which is quite a few PP3's or a hell of a lot of AA's at 13p each

 

paul...

[northernaudioman]

We've been using the Fisher system, distributed by Autograph sales ( www.autograph.co.uk/sales ), and they seem to be very good.

 

Some radio systems ( Sennheiser 3000 series ( SK3063/ EM3532 ) is one of them ) do report a 50% battery level after 30mins, but still the overall battery life is better than a ProCell ( Duracell ) in real world conditions. We were using 3000+ batteries a year and it really annoyed me that these were just being thrown away!

 

We tried a couple of other systems ( the expensive Sennheiser system was one of them ) with very little joy, but the Fisher system really worked!

 

We use them on very high profile shows without any probs ( Live TV, Theatre & Conference ).

[slim_mcslim]

one of the main problems I have with rechargeables, other than there decay characteristics, which is the same as a zinc carbon/zinc chloride is the fact that if you are using somebody elses, eg a hire system, you don't know how well they have been looked after, how old they are or how likely they are to fail, so to use them in a radio mic where there is a chance of failure then that just seems silly, when setting up a show you do everything to minimise the chance of a failure, one of the things being changing radio mic batteries, another being taping down cable, or even taping connectors together, when you hire broadcast camera's you are at the mercy of the batteries that come with the camera's, now these are looked after generally better as they are quite pricey items, but I have had re-celled PAG batteries that only last 15mins, which is not too handy when filming something, especially trying to keep a continuous timecode across a couple of camera's

[northernaudioman]

I agree with slim, you really need to keep tabs on who is using and how they are being used. We date code all batteries, dispose of any that start looking at all problematic, and replace every six months. Still saves us money and is sooo much better for the environment.

 

We still use ProCell for all dry hire!