Microphone ideas with no pulpit

[adessmith]

Looking into the Sanyo Eneloop batteries.
We really do need to do something about our battery situation.
Can someone suggest a charger that will juice up more than 4 batteries at a time?
Currently, for our musicians, we have 3 wireless mics, 4 in-ear-monitor receivers, and 1 wireless guitar transmitter, each requireing 2 AA batteries. Then we have the pastors headset beltpack which takes 2. We blow through batteries like crazy.

My understanding is that the standard approach is to put in fresh rechargables before every service, and put them all on charge after every service?
This would mean 18 AA batteries 3 times a week. (sunday morning, tuesday nights, and wednesday nights) We would need at least 5 of the quad-chargers, which seems ridiculous.
And We are getting ready to add a couple more wireless handsets! There has got to be a good charger out there that will charge more than 4 at a time.

I think we would be ok to go tuesday and wednesday nights on a single charge... My concern with using them for more than a single service is that currently we rely on the battery level indicator, and just replace when it gets to about 1/2. Seems like we usually get a couple weeks out of each set. With 1.2v rechargables you get almost no warning, so we couldnt rely on the battery meters. (I guess the meter gets its info from the voltage, which drops off much more abruptly on rechargables.)

[waynehoskins]

Originally Posted by Tim Padrick

Sounds like you should just get a wireless handheld, which can be put on the pulpit, and popped off and passed around. The Sennheiser 100 series are just fine.

We just bought a new 135G3 this week, very nice. It replaced a SKP100-G1 whose power button finally died.

[bbrunskill]

adessmith, I've recently organized our recharging system.

We're running a similar amount of wireless as you, and I've setup a station with:
1x Amazon.com: Maha Powerex MH-C801D Eight Cell 1-Hr... and 1x Amazon.com: Charger Kit: PowerEx MH-C490F Stealth...
At some point, I'll get another 8 AA charger.

They are permanently mounted in a rack so they can't be borrowed, along with two plastic boxes - 1 for charged batteries, 1 for batteries that need to be charged.

After every service, the sound tech takes out all the used batteries, and loads them in the charger. Any batteries that were in the charger go into the charged batteries box.

Since I installed the system, we've only once had a problem - when a group used some microphones for a rehearsal without a sound tech. They left the mics turned on, the batteries went flat and we don't have two full sets.

But I keep a box of non-rechargable AA's for emergencies, so it wasn't a major.

I can post pics of our charging station if it would help you

Ben

[adessmith]

Hey, a pic of the charging station would be excelent.
I'd love to see how you have all this mounted.
I'm not a fan of 1 hour chargers, I need to look and see if there is a "slow" version of that 8 cell charger, but you got me on the right track.

[bbrunskill]

I'll take a pic tomorrow. That charger has a slow switch, which is what we use. Haven't timed a charge though. It also has a condition mode which fully flattens the battery and then slow charges it. This apparently should be done every so often.

[[Admin] osborn4]

That looks very similiar to the Maha charger we got in April 2010 with some sanyo AA batteries. Haven't had a problem.

[adessmith]

Wow... This is pretty awesome!
http://www.ansmann.net/products/batt...mount-chargers