Funny that I could not find any previous thread on this…
Is it safe to use a typical 9V battery with the Ribbons 2 pedal?
What happens when the battery runs low - could operating under that condition cause damage to the DSP components? I would rather take it on the road without a wall-wart… as my gig bag needs to be light and compact.
Thanks for your input.
We do not recommend using any version of Ribbons with a 9V battery.
However, we can explore what might happen if you power Ribbons with a 9V battery. Please note this is not an officially supported configuration.
Ribbons does not have an internal 9V battery attachment. You’d have to use some sort of external 9V battery adapter like this:
Let’s say we power it with a 9V battery from Duracell. We can use the “Constant Current” graph from the battery data sheet to see how it might perform when plugged into Ribbons:
Ribbons draws ~180mA of current at 9V, and ~250mA at 6V, and shuts down at ~5.8V. We can use the 250mA reference on this chart to estimate how the battery will decay over time. It looks like it might last about 1.5 - 2 hours on a 9V battery.
When the battery reaches 5.8V, Ribbons will crash or rapidly attempt to power on and off. In informal testing, the unit on my desk did not appear to be damaged when the battery drooped below 5.8V, but we cannot guarantee that long-term exposure to this undervoltage state is harmless. You could also experience reduced headroom once the battery begins to sag.
TLDR: We do not recommend using a 9V battery. However, you may be able to power Ribbons for about an hour or so with a fresh battery. We cannot guarantee that it will not damage the pedal over time, nor can we provide support for or endorse using Ribbons outside its specified power requirements. Use this method at your own risk.
Wow, OK…! Thanks for the very thorough and well thought out explanation.
I should be able to make a better decision now, for sure.
