Having had that long blogging break, I sometimes have to search back to see if I’ve posted about something I’ve been meaning to mention. One of those topics is portable power, particularly for musical exploits.

The bands I’m in often have outdoor gigs during the summer months and it isn’t unusual for a convenient mains plug to be unavailable. That is one of the reasons I have been working on the tuba but, while I’m able to keep up the training band now, I’m not quite ready for the some of the pieces done by the more senior bands. For a bandstand gig in May, the conductor of the concert band hired a portable power source from a company called Jackery – essentially like the power banks I am familiar with for phones but on a bigger scale. It used to be that you needed a leisure battery and an inverter to plug in outside but modern technology puts this all in a small, neat bundle.

That experience worked out well – over the course of a couple of hours I barely scratched the surface of the power available with my amp and FX unit while being able to support the bottom end of the band. In fact, I was so pleased with it, I went out and bought my own unit – a slightly smaller model from the same company. The Explorer 240 is their smallest model but, with a few more outings under my belt, I can confirm it easily handles my requirements for two or three hours gigging.

Have bass — and amp and power supply — will travel!