Batt-O-Meter Guitar Pedal and Preamp Battery Tester

I am an acoustic guitar player, and my primary venue is with my church worship team on Sunday's and for other various church services. Allow me to briefly describe the headache that I encounter with batteries for my 2004 Yamaha FGX-04 acoustic electric guitar...When I arrive on a typical Sunday for our pre-service practice, I typically throw in a fresh 9V battery into my guitar. Setting my volume knob to 75% on the guitar, I let my BBE pre-amp and DI to take care of the rest. On a given Sunday, my battery will be in the guitar for about 5 hours, and a single fresh Duracell ProCell is typically more than enough to get me by. However, when I show up for mid-week practice, I have no way to know if that battery is still good enough to get me through the setlist. Is it good enough to get me by until Sunday? Who knows, and I would hate for a battery to die mid-way through service. So the inevitable solution is to pop a fresh battery in every time I bring my guitar to church. I don't know if you've checked recently but 9V batteries aren't cheap, nor am I made of money. I needed a better solution than buying tons and tons of batteries and not knowing if I was throwing away batteries that can still have some use to them.I purchased this meter as opposed to purchasing rechargeable 9V batteries. Why? Because rechargeable 9V batteries are still incredibly unreliable and I cannot risk the chance of a battery discharging too rapidly to last through the service. Standard alkaline cells are still the industry standard for electric acoustics, nothing beats tried and true chemistry.Now, back to my dilemma. Once purchasing this meter, I determined that the lowest voltage I can safely supply to my guitar without risking premature loss of signal, is about 7V. Low and behold, I started testing batteries after every service, and I'm finding more and more that I can get more life out of them. On occasion, I get a battery that lasts less than expected, but that's the beauty of this meter: if I use such a battery, before I jump back onto the platform to jam with the band, I can be check and be confident that my battery is still good!Not to mention this meter can check several different chemistry types of batteries, and several different styles thanks to the hyprid 1/4" jack. I have used this feature just a little, but rather prefer popping the battery out of the guitar and touching it to the contacts on the meter. I also have yet to try this handy little device with any battery-powered pedals since my rig is completely powered. The only thing eating up 9V batteries is my guitar.I am so thankful for this little device! It provides me with alot more confidence in my instrument and my sound, and just for that reason, it was worth the money. Nothing beats the relief knowing that your equipment is functioning fine, you have a good battery, and you've practiced.Best of luck and God bless!

This product is excellent! Save's time from pulling batterys and replacing them just to make sure your battery doesn't give out while performing. Not to mention the money you save on getting full use of the battery life. Totaly easy to use, stick the plug in push the button you have the voltage and it calculates time left in accordance with the drain that the unit (in my case acoustic electric) is putting on it. Awesome product! It will pay for itself in getting the most out of your batterys, plus the peace of mind that your battery light is not going to start flashing in the middle of a set, I don't know how much time I have left when that happens and I never will!

NOTE: The 1/4" plug is slightly smaller than normal 1/4" plugs, so inserting it completely may not allow for proper contact to the terminals inside the 1/4" jack you're plugging it into. Researching the design of a 1/4" jack will show that you can insert it at different levels (half-inserted) to obtain proper contact for the device to read the voltage under load. For some of my instruments, slight tilting of the 1/4" plug has been successful.This device tests your 9-volt battery installed in your acoustic instrument without requiring you to slack or remove the strings - which is EXACTLY what I was looking for. I've had a 9-volt go dead in my guitarist's instrument in the middle of set - it was horrible. Now, before I leave the house for every gig, I pop this guy into my guitar/uke and in less than 30 seconds I'll have the piece of mind that my pickup won't fail me. The clear head that this device gives me on stage allows me to concentrate on making music instead of worrying about my equipment. I don't need a device that's 100% accurate, I just need it to be 100% consistent. When the estimated remaining hours reads 100 or less, I change the battery in my instruments and recycle them down to a device on my pedalboard that has a much easier accessibility. I don't want to take the chance with anything less than 100 hours, so as long as the device is consistent in it's reading, this is my "gas tank empty warning light" to change it out.As if the above isn't already worth the price, the on-board battery tester has pulled about 6 9-volts batteries out of our recycle bag! These things still had juice but I had no way of testing and didn't want to take the change - again the price for piece of mind is priceless.Hope this review helps, love this device and will recommend it to anyone who has the need to test a 9-volt battery located in difficult-to-access locations of an instrument.Cheers!

Had great hopes for the Batt-O_meter but it doesn't work in either of my units. Got it to avoid removing the battery in my Martin guitar to test it. Have a standard Martin acoustic guitar with factory installed under saddle pick-up with a 9 volt battery. Also doesn't work with my Fishman Aura pedal. It does say in the literature that it may not work in all products. But these are pretty main stream items and you would like to think it would work. Contacted their technical support and they told me I need to remove the battery from the guitar in order to test it. I told them it is a real hassle to remove the battery from inside that body and if I go to all that trouble, I'm just going to change the battery. That's kind of the whole point of the Batt-O-Meter. Now I'm stuck.