The Electra Forums

My drummer and I are going to see Phish at the Gorge later this summer and are planning to camp in the general camping area. We were thinking it would be fun to play a set or two right there in the camping area.

My buddy owns an organic-based landscaping company and his truck is rigged with a solar panel and heavy duty batteries to power his equipment (no gas-burning equipment). We did a test run last weekend and everything seemed to work ok, although there seemed to be a lot of noise in the system.

All of our equipment will be plugged into a filtered surge protector power strip plugged into the power inverter on his solar system. The rest of our set up includes:

1) Electronic drum kit (acoustic kit is WAY too big for this setting).
2) Bass amp (for drum kit).
3) 5W Vox guitar amp (power attenuator down to 1/4W).
4) Pedalboard.
5) EON powered PA.

Is there any way we would damage our equipment by drawing power from his solar system?

Thanks All!

I'm no electrician but I think too much power is more likely to cause damage. 110V is 110V - too little power and chances are you wouldn't be able to run anything. Is that Vox amp one of the ones you can run off D cells? I know a bunch of pedals on a wall wart could be dicey. I'd use 9v's for them.

Your buddy has his own Solar System? Kidding aside, this sounds like a lot of fun, good luck man! The JBL probably draws the most current from your list, and I love those self contained EON's (I have five of them, two 15" Mains, three 10" Monitors). You won't damage your equipment (famous last words...), especially if you're running it through a surge/conditioner strip, but I'm assuming if you draw too much power it might hurt the solar power system, but that's just conjecture on my part, your buddy probably knows a lot more since he put it together. You may want to test it to the limits before you take the trip, and see how the solar power behaves when its being overdrawn... and then again maybe you don't want to tempt fate. Enjoy, Mike.

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Actually having too little power can make equipment run hot. That said it it can run electric motors for lawn work, I would think it should have the capabilities for your system

I was at the Fat Tire Festival last weekend here in Nashville (New Belgium Brewery) and they had a stage that was solar powered. They had a large truck with solar panels on top. It was pretty neat.

Thank you for all the great input... I really appreciate the feedback and info!