I wanted to write a review for this “Sanyo Pedal Juice” unit I got at the end of December. Sanyo was nice enough to send me one to review, and it’s pretty cool. It’s a rechargeable lithion ion battery to power your guitar pedals. The unit I tested can power up to 2 pedals, but they make another version that can power up to 3 pedals.
Here’s the official web site: Sanyo Pedal Juice
The Pedal Juice unit is just about the size of a guitar pedal, and takes about 3 1/2 hours to charge. Once fully charged, it can power your pedals for up to 50 hours. After I charged mine I made a 5 minute video while hooking it up:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXRDM4bxpXM
As I showed in the video, you get a carrying case, the power adapter to charge it, 2 cords to power 2 pedals, and one reverse ground adapter. The Pedal Juice model I have is the KBC-9V3U which powers up to 2 guitar pedals. The black pedal juice model that debuted at NAMM last week is supposed to power up to 3 pedals.
I think the Sanyo Pedal Juice is going to be pretty popular because I’ve never seen anything like it on the market. There are all kinds of power supplies for effect pedals, but none of them are a rechargeable battery like this one. If you’re a guitar player you can appreciate this product because your pedal board is in front of you on the stage. If you are using AC adapters or a powered pedal board, you have to run a cord all the way back to the wall behind your amp for power. The only other thing you can do is keep your pedals stocked up with batteries.
But there are 2 reasons that people use 9 volt batteries. The first is because guitar effects pedals don’t come with an adapter cord – you have to pay an extra $20 to get one – or have an expensive board that has it’s own connection cords. The second is because many people believe that the power from the wall can infect the guitar signal by introducing noise. Believe it or not there are many pro players that have batteries in their gear on stage for this very reason.
The Pedal Juice will solve this problem for a lot of people, because it provides clean filtered juice to your gear. You can use it on multi-effect pedals and recorders too. Great to just throw in your gear bag to take to the jam space, and it’s great for gigs too. 9-volt batteries were about $5 each last time I checked. By the time you buy 25-30 batteries, you could own this! And that doesn’t include gas, your time spent to buy them, and the odd-gig where you forgot to buy them and ran out of batteries!
You should check one out.
You can find the Sanyo Pedal Juice at Musicians Friend:
Hey – I have a pedal Juice and I use it all the time to power way more than 2 pedals. All you need is a daisychain, you can pedal as many as you have outs on the chainn. I do gigs and power 8 pedals with mine.
And it’s great, btw. No more throwing away 9volts. No more worring will I have power – if the light is green, I have plenty, and if the light turns yellow, I still will def. make it through the gig.
I’ve had it since December, and I think I already saved the price in 9volts.
Good to know – I think they need to make that more of a selling point, and also include more cables to daisy chain with…
Thanks for this review (full disclosure – from my name, you can see I work for Sanyo)
I just have one comment.
L.Taggert is right – you can power many pedals from each out on Pedal Juice.
Each out provides 1,000mA of power (2,000mA in total), and the average analogue pedal draws about 10mA or less, so you can power many pedals for many hours with a fully charged Pedal Juice.
Also, regarding daisy chains, there are excellent ones (i.e. Visual Sound or Godlyke cables) for around $9-$15 on Guitar Center, Sam Ash, Musician’s Friend, Sweetwater or American Musical Supply websites.