[wolftigerrosebud]

Wadup y'all. I live in South Florida, where we have ridiculous thunderstorms and frequent power outages/surges for around 7-9 months out of the year. Right now I'm just using a surge protector, but I've been thinking very seriously about buying a battery backup unit with an automatic voltage regulator. Hopefully, having the voltage regulation will produce an even sine wave. That's what I'm thinking, at least.

I've never really encountered guitarists talking about using battery backups for amplifiers, and I've been wondering if anyone here has any experience with them. Since there are so many people who know a thing or two about electronics on here, I thought this would be a good topic for discussion.

[strumminsix]

I've never really encountered guitarists talking about using battery backups for amplifiers, and I've been wondering if anyone here has any experience with them. Since there are so many people who know a thing or two about electronics on here, I thought this would be a good topic for discussion.

They are more common with folks who use digital equipment but I've seen then as part of a few folks' rigs. A story I heard was about a bar losing power, went dark, pa out, and for a few beats all you hear are the drums and guitar or keys which ever had a UPS

[RiverRat]

Take all the equipment you want to keep running, reading the tag on each one an get the volts (typically 120V AC) and multiply by the AMPs. Do that for evverthing and then add the VotaAmps required for each one to get the total VoltAmps needed to run reverything.

Now head over to a site like APC and goto the UPS selector application:

http://www.apc.com/tools/ups_selector/index.cfm

Use the middle button, CONFIGURE BY LOAD, and plug in the total VoltAmps needed and the desired runtime. It will give you several products based on the amount of runtime provided and capacity.

BE PREPARED FOR STICKER SHOCK!

Note: I am an APC Certified Partner.

[zambiland]

If you want to do it right, get a double conversion true sine wave UPS. I got a very small one for my computer recording rig and it works great. I have a much bigger Liebert in my shed that weighs a metric sh*tload, but handles a 1800 watts. It don't use it, so if anyone in the Denver/Boulder area is interested, get in touch.