NGD: Keith McMillen Batt-O-Meter

[tauzero]

New gadget day. Mentioned recently in a topic about changing batteries, it didn't seem ridiculously expensive and I thought I'd get one and give it a try. It seems it's only available from Thomann at the moment, so I felt obliged to buy something else (an sE V7 microphone, as it happens) to slightly reduce the pain of the £10 shipping.

 

I've very recently bought an OLP Tony Levin, and the battery in it was a non-name brand of indeterminate age which was still able to make the preamp work. I left that battery in so I'd have a reasonable test subject, along with the other basses I have knocking about. First thigs first, I put in a new Procell 9V battery and checked the self-test, which was fine. The first volunteer for testing was an Antoniotsai dragon bass which showed a healthy 9.06V and 404 hours of playing left. Then I went for the Tony Levin, and that was 6.6V and showed LO. The Sei Jazz BC bike was a little under 9V with 240 hours remaining, the Sei Flamboyant 5 was rather lower and only 36 hours remaining. I wanted to try it on a Variax but either the socket is recessed a tiny bit too far or the switching is done by means other than shorting ring and sleeve. That did make me wonder about recessed sockets, so I tried an Ibanez SRF705 which I think has the same recessed socket as all the SR range, and that also didn't work. I need to make up a short stereo jack extension lead to test recessed socket basses, or get a stereo coupler and use a stereo jack-jack lead with at least one straight jack. My one and only 18V bass showed 10.2V, as expected.

 

So it's an effective measuring device but with a minor design flaw. And I've got two basses (at least) to replace batteries on.