A-Busking we will go...

We've been trying really hard to reduce our dependancy on PA's and power systems, but the fact is even as an acoustic trio we do need to use some amplification to balance our sound, to deal with the fact we have 2 quiet male voices and a powerful female voice. Also Ed's playing style is much louder than my usual finger picking and twiddles style so I can get drowned out playing pure acoustic.

So Ed and I have both invested in some Roland Battery power amps, quite the bee's knees. On their own these solve 90% of the issues, but...

I wanted a little bit extra though since I like to use my TC VoiceLive3 unit for my guitar and vocal boosts when doing solo's and so on. Also I really would like to try to introduce a bit of looper fun into our set. But we can't do that without an easy to transport power system.

I've tried to find a few but honestly failed miserably as most units don't provide the 12v power the TC unit needs.
But I did have an awesome 5v unit, also designed to power some laptops and even boost a car battery if needed. But it didn't have a 12v out plug, only 5v and 15/16/19v..the 12v was limited to a jump cable system and no cable output which was a bit of a bummer...I felt for a while I'd just bought a really massive Iphone charger and it went in the drawer.

Fortunately I found a simple USB 5v > 12v gadget on line for pennies, which does exactly that.. takes 5vUSB and bumps it up to 12v. I was worried about ampage but its managing fine, been running for an hour now and still showing 5 bars on the power levels.  It looks like this will do fine.
I did also have to add a polarity swap as the TC has + center unlike every other unit under the sun :D but I had one lying around anyway.. Also pennies. It does get a bit warm, at the business end, so I'm ordering a few others as possible spares just in case but I think as long as it is in the open air it will be fine.

I now have a viable portable busking solution, with our 2 roland amps, (Ed has an AC33 I have a Street EX) and this little power unit to drive my main fx pedal..

Busking and lighter loads for small gigs...here we come

Ahthankyew