Battery powering a MPC1000

Hello there!

New here on the forum. I have concluded that I a: spend to little time making music and b: spend to much time on public transport to/from work. Right, that combined with a periodic lust for an MPC made me go hmmm...

The MPC500 seems nice, portable and battery powered, so at the moment, that's what I'm planning to buy. However, I find a single LP filter without env or lfo to be rather limiting. Also, when in the studio, multiple outs would be nice. Therefore, I would much rather go for a MPC1000, with it's twin multimode filters. However, even though it doesn't consume a lot of power (19W max), there isn't any way to battery power it.

So, well, question is, has anybody modified a 1000 to run on batteries? If not, has anybode found some nice solution with charger - battery - 110 / 230V outlet, that is resonably portable (say 5kg:s or so) and that can run an mpc1000 for like an hour/charge?

you are a brave man indeed to want to use an mpc on public transport

but back to your question, its also something i've been thinking about since i fly quite a bit. the 1k would just eat away at 7 hour flights.

i dont know jack about electrical engineering so i wouldnt attempt anything myself,.....

but i'm sure i've seen rechargable laptop batteries that have those car ciggarette lighters on one end. which would mean all you have to do is get a spare mpc power cable and splice on a cigarette lighter thingy to the end if the battery was powerful enough.

or just buy an sp404

Had a sp-404, that device sucks man, I don't know how to say it in english but that device just ain't "big" enough... you can't choose which sample you want to load... you can't copy a pattern... man... I wished I never bought that thing

sknkwrkz wrote:
but i'm sure i've seen rechargable laptop batteries that have those car ciggarette lighters on one end. which would mean all you have to do is get a spare mpc power cable and splice on a cigarette lighter thingy to the end if the battery was powerful enough.

I don't think that would work, since the cigarette lighter thingy (what is that called?) delivers DC, and the MPC wants AC. Along those lines, you might be able to pick up something with a DC output, plug an inverter into that (you can pick up a relatively small one that should deliver 19W), and the MPC into the inverter.

Failing that, I reckon it'll be some surgery to find the DC outputs of the AC power supply, and then working out if you can rig up a battery powered equivalent to plug in there. THIS COULD BE VERY DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH WITH A RISK OF ELECTRIC SHOCK OR FIRE, so I would not recommend it, unless you know what you're doing with power electronics. Needless to say, such fiddling around would also completely invalidate any kind of warranty you might have.

Yes, well, I am thinking in the lines of either:

A: Get a small UPS. Problem is that they are mostly made to power something with high power consumtion for a short while, not something with low power consumption during a long time (takes different kind of batteries...)

B: Find some good 12V battery, together with a DC - AC converter. The difficult part is to get it all packaged neatly in a resonably portable, durable and lightweight (enough) package, together with some kind of gauge of remaining power (or even better, runningtime).

C: Open the MPC, measure what the voltage is after the transformer, and wire up a battery lead there, and the attach batteries with the right voltage.

D: Buy a MPC500 for the road, and a 1000 or 2500 for the studio. (After all, it's just money, right... ;o) ). However, it would be nice to have the extra features of the 1000 on the road as well...

i knew there was something about AC/DC that i didnt quite understand

having said that i did find this:

http://www.amazon.com/Targus-PAPWR005U- ... lectronics

sounds like something you might be able to hack up and splice, but again i take no responibility if you do

keep us informed rydan, cos i got 2 weeks before i gotta take a 7 hour flight so get cracking

Yes. One of the problems with DC to AC converters are that few of them recreate a pure sine waveform. Many just chop it into a square wave, some into a "modified sine", which is a more rounded square wave. Most of the time, this is OK, but it generates high frequency spikes in the power, and computers and the like can be sensitive to that kind of interference. So, well, to do it properly, I would like to use a converter that delivers pure sine wave, and those are expensive, so with batterys, charget and box, I'm at least half way to the price of the MPC500, so well, I'm actually considering getting a MPC500 for now, and then a 1000 or 2500 for studio use, if I like it. (I don't have any MPC as of yet...)

If I want to continue on the MPC1000-track, the best would probably be to try to add a patch point for batteries after the AC/DC-converter in the MPC. Yes, this will void any warranty, but hey, that's life...

I just thought that somewhere, someone had had the exact same problem, and already created a nice little box for running a MPC1000 from batteries... =)

And, after some discussions with the nice people at APC, I think I have a solution (that will work for me at least). A small UPS, say a 500VA one. Will run the MPC1000 for about 90 - 120 minutes according to their numbers. Weighs 6kg, so won't be as portable as the MPC500, but since I'll be using it on bus/train, I don't mind. Affordable, about $100.

A good backpack i recommended though... =)

The bonus is that this can also be used for battery powering other equipment, like the Elektron Machinedrum, or for that matter, the Dave Smith Evolver... =)

damn 6 kgs?!

the 1k is around 3.5kgs too.

so you'll be lugging around just under 10kgs to and from work.

lol now theres an alternative fitness program for you!

...and that blody UPS has a fan with sound level 45dB, and must not be covered when on. Back to the old drawingboard...

(The MPC500 seems more and more attractive...)

yeah the 500 does sound like a better deal.

it is pretty expensive tho, and that screen makes me think twice about it.

the reason i was thinking of an sp404 was the battery power and the fact that a combination of that and the 1k i already have would be interesting. seems like it would beat having to fire up the old laptop while in transit.

its a damn shame the handsonic hpd-10 isnt battery powered, and i dont think you can actually sequence on it anyway.

the search goes on lol.

it is pretty expensive tho, and that screen makes me think twice about it.

After seeing the 500 on the web when it first came out, I was like wow!!!! battery powered MPC!!!! Then I looked at the crappy little LCD screen and the specs which indicated less features and said to myself "No Way!!" Therefore, I bought the MPC 1000 instead. I've used my 1000 in a car once with a AC to DC power inverter with no problems at all. It would be nice if someone did come up with a nice battery pack solution for the MPC 1000.

WKZ wrote:Had a sp-404, that device sucks man, I don't know how to say it in english but that device just ain't "big" enough... you can't choose which sample you want to load... you can't copy a pattern... man... I wished I never bought that thing

Actually you can copy patterns and choose what samples you load....you'll need your laptop though. I had a 404(it was basically an extra effects processor for my MPC100)....it wasn't bad at all....Go to SP404forums.com they've found a lot of work arounds for things that people wish the 404 could do like muting samples in patterns for tracking...pattern copy.....and other useful things.....Check out that forum, I bet you'll feel different about you 404 after doing so. I did end up trading my 404, along with a Proteus 2000 module, and a Mo'Phatt keys for a Motif ES6 because I'm not traveling as much, and I didn't really need battery powered gear. When I travel I take my laptop (with REASON and LIVE 5) Axiom 25, and my MPC1000 and I'm strickly beatmaking in the hotel....... Although I'll eventually get another SP404 and a MPC500. Those two along with an MP3/CD player is a killer battery operated preproduction studio IMO.

Ok, just tested the 500 out in a music store yesterday, and, well...

The display is pretty limited, and it's a shame it doesn't have more filter types and more separate outs, but all in all, I think it's very good. Some of the menu digging was a bit annoying, but it's rather well though out, so it wasn't nearly as bad as I had expected. That said, I'm not really fond of menu digging at all, so for me, this will work about as good as the menu system on a MPC1000 (that is, not very good, but manageable)...

Given the off the shelf battery power and small size and weight (and the assumed better pad construction), I think I will give up my attempts to find a portable battery solution for the MPC1000 and simply go for the 500. It will give me a serious "toy" for travel, and also a very good recorder for field recording of samples and such. If I find that I enjoy the MPC way of working a lot, then I might buy a 1000 or 2500 as well for studio use...

Now, if I could just find a good battery power solution for my machinedrum... =)