I was looking at swapping out a stock passive pickup for an active pickup and after looking at my options I realized some things.

An upgrade install from passive pickups to actives is pretty easy for the most part especially if you purchase a prewired pickguard or a kit from a company like EMG who makes a great wiring harness system but the area that needs to be improved is the battery system itself for these changeovers the kits end with a 9 volt battery clip but what about mounting the battery somewhere secure yet easy to get to and what if you want to run an 18 volt system?

The whole battery dilemma is left up to the consumer to figure out the best way to store and secure the battery in their paticular guitar setup and all pickup makers offer is a battery box which requires routing to the guitar body but this is a fatal flaw because the average do it yourselfer guitar guy who would tackle the electronics part usually will not feel to comfortable altering the guitar body itself which requires a router and a bit of skill and I think because of this a lot of people pass on the active upgrade altogether.

Yes you can stuff a battery into the control cavity of a Les Paul style guitar but you have to make sure the battery is insulated in tape or foam and if you want to do the 18 volt mod which most guys would want to at least try then things get real tight real fast now you have two batteries and more wires to suff into the control cavity and if you own a Strat style guitar your lucky to get one battery underneath the pickguard.

Also there are other pitfalls like taking the screws in and out of the covers over time will strip out the wood of the guitar body and screws could be dropped and lost and plus Strat owners have to unstring the guitar and remove the entire pickguard in order to change the battery.

The sales pitch answer is it’s not that big of a deal the battery lasts for a year or better and that’s with heavy use but what if you forget to unplug your guitar like your supposed to and the battery gets run down or what about the pro musicians who insist on fresh batteries for every gig that’s lot’s of extra work for the guitar techs to change out the batteries every night and a lot of wear and tear on the guitars.

I have designed a small battery box that holds two 9 volt batteries and let’s you choose between the stock 9 volts or the 18 volt mod with the flip of a switch you can even switch off the batteries and not have to worry about unplugging your guitar and the best part is you can clip it onto your belt or slip it onto your guitar strap plus my design plugs right into the stock 9 volt battery clip on the wiring harness that comes with all active kits without having to modify it. All that is required to add my system is to drill one hole to mount a second ¼” jack either in the pickguard on Strats or into the control cover on a Les Paul style and plug in a right angled guitar cable from that jack to the ¼” jack on my battery box viola problem solved!

if interested please PM me

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Hi computersplus, welcome to the Forum.

Frankly, this sounds uncomfortably close to a product sales pitch, which is strictly against the rules of the Forum. I expect people will be posting here very shortly to say so.

And yet, it is an issue that concerns some of us. I didn't bother with active pickups for a long time because of the battery hassle, but eventually modded a Strat with a battery compartment on the back (and rear access control cavity, as you see), for which since I doubted I'd ever do it a second time I didn't bother to make a routing template but simply did the deed with good old fashioned chisels, which was perfectly easy. Like this:





That's fine, but your gizmo sounds interesting too. Rather than PM'ing you, howsabout posting a picture or two here so we can all see what you're talking about? If you find a way of discussing it without trying to sell it to us you may get in under the wire of Forum regs.

Cheers - C

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Hi Ceri, thanks for the reply and nice work on your project it turned out very nice

I am not doing a sales pitch I actually own a computer repair business I'm a PC Tech by trade but guitars are just a hobby but this is an idea I am working on and I am actually building a prototype as we speak.

I just came up with this idea last week it hit me in the middle of the night one night I mean I could not sleep so I set about putting the idea to paper first drawing a wiring schematic then went about shopping for parts to build it.

I am still waiting on the box in which to mount the electronics in I have it wired up already and the box is on it's way from N.J. I had an Amazon gift card so I used it to buy the parts to build the prototype yes I could have went to my local Radio Shack and bought all the parts lol...anyway I should have some pics very soon of the finished prototype.

I just figured I would share the idea who knows it may turn into something I could sell at some point I mean I think it's a good idea but others might not want to buy something like this I'm not sure anyway I am not here to break any rules just trying to help others solve what I see as a roadblock for some people.

here is a pic of what I have so far the electronics have been tested and work perfect cheers!!

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Dude, use some punctuation, please. Got a little hard to follow for a bit. Otherwise, cool idea.

there is that a little better sorry I tend to get on a roll and forget to stop lol....

I actually have other ideas for this like I may add a battery monitor I also thought about having 3 batteries and a rheostat so you could fully adjust all the way up to the max 27 volts that's why I say this is a prototype because I will be working on improving this idea!

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This place sells an external battery box and even a low battery monitor you can mount to the pickguard. I didn't spend a lot of time looking at it but looks like it doesn't do 18v like yours would.

http://www.guitarelectronics.com/catego ... cessories/

Yeah the X-Bat it requires that you plug into that box then run a line to your amp not good for guys using wireless on stage mine is self contained and only uses a short jumper cable from the box to it's own jack mounted in the guitar plus as you said mine goes from off to 9 and then 18 volts by selecting with the switch.

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Excellent - well that's just the sort of thing we're interested in here and should set at rest the minds of people who might have thought the first post was salesmanship (we do get a fair bit of that round here).

I for one will be very fascinated to see where you go with this: please keep us posted!

Cheers - C

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For sure I will update as it progresses...hmm now all I need are some active pickups donated for testing with my device as I built this first to make sure it would work before laying out the cash for pickups lol.....

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ok guys got this all together here are the pics

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all I need to do now is find a nice pouch or holster with a belt loop/clip to put it in.


I think I need to scale it down as small as possible it's just hard to find the perfect size premade project box hmm maybe I could buy a injection molding machine and make my own box stay tuned for my next project lol..ha..ha

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