Cheap 6 X AA to 1 X 9v Battery Conversion (on Boss ME-30)

Today I'm converting a Boss ME-30 guitar effects simulator, designed to run from 6 AA batteries to instead use a single 9v battery.

I was given this from a friend who purchased it online as working, but unfortunately someone had left old batteries in there which had leaked and corroded the casing.

Luckily the boards were fine, so rather than replace the corroded components I opted to use a 9v instead.

The specs are the same (when you open a 9v up there are usually 6 x 1.5 batteries stacked inside) and I keep a ton of 9v spare around for all sorts of things anyway.

Whatever you're converting
A nice full 9v
A drained (or sacrificial) 9v


Screwdriver
Soldering iron/solder
Electrical tape
Wire strippers/cutters
Hot glue
Heatshrink
Dremel, or something to cut plastic

If you already have a spare 9v battery attachment, just go ahead and connect it up to the red and black wires and skip the next bit.

If you dont (like me) then you can easily make one from a dead 9v.

Just carefully cut the casing away, starting from the seam at the top and peel it away in small pieces being careful not to damage the plastic surrounding of the terminals.

When you're about halfway through everything should just slide out.

The top should just lift up easily and be connected to a piece of flat wire on one side, just cut that off & keep the top.
That's the only part you need.

Inside your project, just get the red and black wires that were connected to the battery port and solder them to the salvaged top piece in the right order (on the battery - is female, + is male, so on your connector it's + female and - male).

I added some heatshrink and a covering of hot glue to the connector and hot glued the wires down in a few places along the way make it a bit stronger, seeing as they were not intended to be moveable.

Nice and easy, all up took about 5 minutes.

Time to make it fit.

I removed all the corroded metal parts from the plastic housing and after a quick wash with some warm soapy water it cleaned up pretty well.

Luckily for me there was no hardware under the battery casing, so I simply grabbed the trusty ol dremel and cut a hole through the bottom.

It ended up being a bit close to the edge of a board, so I put a couple of pieces of electrical tape on, just in case.

Fits perfectly, lid closes and doesnt rattle, lovely.

With everything plugged in, hit the on switch and it fired straight up.
After a few hours "testing" its working perfectly.

From the scrapheap to the music room in under 15 minutes for the cost of a flat battery.

Hope this helps.

- Leeroy