Playing the guitar with a cord is a pain, but you can easily upgrade to a high-quality wireless battery pickup. How long do guitar batteries last? Well, it depends on your circumstances, but they last quite a while. Most battery-operated wireless transmitters for guitars last a while. At a minimum, they should last about forty-one days (of continuous twenty-four-hour use) or about a thousand hours. You can get more time out of them if you play a little less often and charge them properly. Naturally, several factors affect how long a battery will last. When the weather gets cold, all your batteries, not just the guitar, will lose charge and wear out significantly faster. Keep your guitar batteries at room temperature. After years of playing wireless, I have experimented with different battery pickups. I’ll happily explain what you need to know to keep your wireless guitar pickups running smoothly. No one wants to lose power in the middle of practice or a show.
How long do guitar batteries last? Guitar batteries typically last over a thousand hours. If you don’t play very often, a good battery may last up to four thousand hours, but the times will vary. Keep in mind that heat, and especially cold, can affect how long your batteries hold a charge.
Why Does My Guitar Have A Battery In It
So you decided to buy a new guitar, but then you noticed something strange. Your guitar has a battery, but why, and how long will the guitar battery last? Can you play if the battery dies?
The obvious answer is that your guitar has a battery inside because it has some type of electronics that require power. Typically this is for one of three reasons. Your guitar may have a gain boost circuit, a preamp, or integrated active pickups.
Gain Boost Circuit
There are plenty of technical answers out there, but in essence, this part gives you a signal boost. When you need to squeeze every possible decibel out, this will give you the extra signal you need. You may also see these in pedal form. However, when your guitar has a battery for a gain boost circuit, it gives you more sound.
In this case, you can absolutely keep playing if the battery dies. Added signal isn’t necessary, but it could mess things up if you’re performing on a large stage, for example.
Preamp
Your amp blasts out the sound, but your preamp gives your sound its distinct appeal and sound. According to Andertons Music, “Unless you use several guitar pedals into the front of your amp, the first thing that your guitar’s output signal interacts with is your amplifier’s preamp section.”
Your preamp helps control the bass, treble, and other aspects of the instrument’s ‘voice.’ A preamp talks to the amp and tells it what to put out specifically. When this is integrated into your guitar, you cannot play without power. Unlike a gain boost circuit, you should never let your battery get low if this is what it’s running.
Active Pickups
A basic passive pickup is a magnet wound with copper wire and generally a piece of plastic. Though it’s hard to imagine that this would be useful, it takes the string vibration and tells the amp to make it louder. There’s nothing wrong with a passive, non-powered pickup.
For rockers and heavy metal guitar players, the active pickup is the juiced-up version of the standard pickup. By connecting a pickup to a battery, cuts high-end distortion and gives you a cleaner sound. A good active pickup can make a lower quality guitar sound like a million bucks.
The downside to active pickups is the battery. If your guitar relies on an active pickup and the battery dies, you have an expensive, fun-looking paperweight in your hands. The strings will twang like they always do with no power, but nothing else will happen.
When Should I Replace My Guitar Battery
How long your guitar battery lasts and when you need to replace it depends largely on how much you play. The quality of your battery will also affect its life. Finally, the way you store your guitar and batteries will make a difference as well.
In general, you can expect a cheap knockoff nine volt to last maybe a thousand hours. Meanwhile, the high-end brand-name counterpart will last around three thousand hours. That may seem like a lot, but you can play through a thousand hours pretty quickly.
Make sure you keep batteries and guitars around room temperature. Hot batteries can explode, and they drain rapidly when cold. Plus, unplugging your guitar as soon as you finish will help prevent excess battery drain.
You’ll have to do your own math on how long it takes you to play a thousand hours. For example, let’s say you play five days a week for two hours. That’s ten hours a week, and there are fifty-two weeks in a year, so you play five-thousand, two-hundred hours every year if you never vary from your routine.
In short, it will go through five or six cheap batteries a year at that rate. However, if you’d opted for a better battery, you would have changed it once. If your sound is off, start by changing any batteries since this will often solve the problem.
Keep in mind the cheap batteries will not only wear out sooner, but they’ll give less power sooner as they reach perhaps twenty-five percent of their remaining life. Change your batteries before they die. Alternately, you can go with a rechargeable battery and only need a change every two or more years.
Check out the Amoper Wireless Guitar System 2.4GHz with Rechargeable Lithium Battery when you need a change. These long-lasting transmitters can transmit up to a hundred and sixty-four feet. Even on the largest stage, you can still rock out. Best of all, Amopers rotate 280°, and they are compatible with multiple systems. To order yours from Amazon, click here.
What Batteries Do Guitars Use
Most guitars need a single nine-volt battery. Of course, many models have no battery at all. Better still, a pack of properly stored nine volts will last five or more years before they ‘go bad.’
If you don’t go with rechargeable batteries, then get a small package of nine volts. You can store a spare in your gig bag, but keep the rest in a room-temperature, dry area. Battery storage boxes are great for this, but you can also use a pantry shelf or stick them in a closet
How Can I Tell If My Guitar Battery Is Low
Some guitar batteries have an indicator light to tell you when the battery needs replacing. If you don’t have this feature, it can be a little hard to know how long your guitar batteries will last. Other than doing the math, is there a way to know if a battery is low?
One way is to grab a battery tester. However, you won’t always have it with you, and batteries don’t care what you packed. When they’re done, they are done. Hence, always bring a spare battery, but I’ll also share some of the warning signs, so you know when to use it.
Undoubtedly, if the guitar dies, but the amp and cord are fine, you waited too long. Guitars don’t stop making noise unless the strings-to-amp connection is broken somewhere. Don’t go out and buy new pickups or blame your amp before you do a basic battery swap.
As ToneTopics points out, “The clear signs when your active pickups need a battery replacement is when you detect a noticeable drop in ‘signal strength,’ ‘gain’ and ‘output.’” By the time this happens, there’s less than a quarter of your battery life left. Especially if you went with the cheap batteries, you should change it before it gets worse.
A Getaria Wireless Rechargeable Digital Transmitter Receiver from Amazon will help you ditch the cord. The stereo jack cable plug allows you to use this transmitter with headphones. Getarias are also compatible with most PCs. Better still, they can support up to six devices working simultaneously, so your whole band can go wireless. Read the excellent Amazon reviews by clicking here.
How Much Does A Guitar Battery Cost
Since guitars don’t have special, dedicated batteries, they aren’t as expensive as you might think. You could probably find them at a dollar store, but your guitar batteries won’t last very long if you buy the dirt-cheap versions. Luckily, this is not a big deal.
You should be able to find multipacks of nine-volt batteries for less than ten dollars in most places. Though the prices are subject to change over time, a two-pack of name-brand, top-tier batteries is about eight dollars as of this writing. Prices vary depending on where you live, but it’s not a big expense, especially for a thousand hours of play. Choose a rechargeable, and you’ll only end up paying a few pennies a year for the electricity you need to charge them instead.
I recommend the high-quality and cost-effective Westshell 1 Key to Switch Wireless Guitar Transmitter. At six hours working-time per charge, you can practice all day, plus these come in pairs, so you don’t need to stop when the sun goes down. Westshells have no lag or interference, great audio quality, and a stable signal. Learn more on Amazon when you click here.
Final Thoughts
Kicking a cord or tripping over it means you’re using outdated equipment. Batteries used to be inefficient, but modern batteries can last months or even years. Toss those old cords and get a battery-powered transmitter instead. Easy to charge with just a simple cord (usually included), you can play all day without falling over a long cable.
Make sure you charge batteries fully after each use. You don’t need to drain them, and refilling keeps them from draining more quickly in the future. Additionally, store guitar batteries at room temperature whenever possible. Keeping all your batteries at roughly seventy to seventy-five degrees is best for their longevity.
Next time you open up a guitar case and find a battery pack with a jack in it, you’ll know what to do. Plug and play is the future, and a good battery will last a long time.