OK guys, here’s a great summary guide for this as I’ve tested many battery packs now on my collection of 7 Elektron devices:
Machinedrum UW+ MKII
Monomachine MKII
Octatrack MKI
Digitone
Digitakt
Analog Rytm MKII
Analog Four MKII
In summary, your cheapest solution for all the newer 12v devices that is also TSA compliant and can deliver the necessary 2A for the MKII Analog boxes is the TalentCell 72W 100WH battery for $51.99 on Amazon:
This will power an Analog Rytm or Analog Four MKII via DC with no power adapter for about 2 hours and the Digitakt or Digitone for about 4 hours before the battery pack fails to output the necessary amps or volts and cause the devices to freeze or glitch. When this happens, the battery will still show about 75% charge capacity.
TSA laws prevent you from going on a plane with a lithium power bank of over 100WH unless you have advance airline approval. Don’t buy one with a higher capacity than that if you plan to fly with it. You’d probably get away with it but now and then you get a stickler TSA agent. What’s funny about this is that as far as I can tell, the laws do not specify the voltage for that 100WH rating, which matters a lot. Seems to me like legislators don’t understand power which means TSA people are unlikely to understand it either.
With special advance airline approval you can take packs as big as 300WH. You can probably get away with taking a 300WH capacity pack on a plane if you just say you’re camping and need it for your CPAP machine, but you risk having to surrender the pack to the TSA if you just show up without advance airline approval.
For the older 6V 3A devices, the cheapest solution is an AC output inverter pack like one of the portable inverters made by RAVpower. Here is the cheapest one:
You can power one of the older 6V devices for 6-7 hours with this 72WH pack and a newer Analog MKII box for about 2 hours 45 minutes with it, so it’s definitely the cheapest universal solution but you have to use the Elektron power adapter with it, which makes it bulkier and a bit more awkward.
If you have both older 6V and newer 12V devices, and want the most efficient and least bulky solution that charges fast and is also TSA approved, the Omnicharge 20+ is the way to go. I couldn’t find another battery pack other than the Omnicharge that outputs 6V DC which is a highly uncommon voltage. Plenty will give you 12V.
You would think that a higher MAH or WH rating on a battery bank would result in more runtime and that going direct DC vs using the AC adapter would also give you more runtime per WH because of efficiency losses coverting DC to AC to DC, but this is just not true!
The TalentCell 100WH battery, for example, gives me just over 2 hours run time with my Analog Rytm on direct DC without the AC to DC adapter but the RAVpower 74.37 WH inverter power bank used with the Elektron AC ot DC adapter gives my Rytm 2 hours and 45 minutes of runtime. Neither one specifies what voltage the WH rating is at, which may be another factor I cannot account for.
I believe this discrepancy has to do with the voltage regulation built into inverters as well as the Elektron AC to DC power supply.
The problem with powering directly from DC is that DC power banks without an AC inverter struggle to deliver consistently high enough amperage or voltage to keep the devices working normally across their entire charge capacity.
I’m seeing DC battery packs without AC inverters stop delivering high enough amperage or voltage at 12v output to keep an Analog Rytm working without a glitch or freeze at anywhere from 20% to 75% of their indicated charge capacity. At full charge they will work but you can’t use their full WH capacity because the amps or volts drop down to below what the device needs to operate when you hit a certain discharge level that is long before full discharge.
Conversely, any battery pack other than the Omnicharge with an inverter used in conjunction with the Elektron AC to DC power supply actually gets you more run time per WH simply because the power goes through several phases of transformation and regulation before reaching the device. This results in efficiency loss but the amps and volts remain more consistent as the pack discharges, allowing you to actually use the full capacity of the pack instead of a fraction of it.
So if you want the longest lasting, most universally compatible and TSA approved solution for the best price, get this one:
This should give you 4+ hours of runtime for $120ish with even the most power hungry Analog boxes and 8+ hours with the 1A 12V devices or the 6V 3A devices using the AC outlet with the original Elektron AC to DC adapter. It’s bulkier and over 2x more expensive than the TalentCell, however, so it only makes sense if you want double the runtime for more than double the price and don’t mind a lot more bulk and/or need a universally compatible solution. Two of these will give you 8-16 hours with any Elektron box in a TSA approved 100HW capacity and also power any 110v, USB or USB-C device.
A less bulky but more expensive solution that comes close to the runtime is the Omnicharge 20+ with a TalentCell 100WH backup to passthrough charge the Omnicharge while using it. This configuration allows you to power ANY device of ANY voltage requirement up to 2A uninterrupted from direct DC for 7+ hours (no power adapter) and all TSA approved as well with minimal bulk and cables. A lot of FX pedals and keyboards take 9v and the Omnicharge can be set to output any DC voltage so this works great with truly any device, even the Roland MC-707 which takes a wierd 5.7V or a Dave Smith Tetra which takes 15V to 18V.
Some devices like the Korg NTS-1 are very prone to line noise on their outputs from dirty power or interference. If you’re sampling or recording a mini synth with a Digitakt, Rytm or Octatrack, you’ll want a separate power bank for each device. Running two devices from one power bank will get you buzz and hum.
And the Ripcord is a fantastic solution for any 12v or 9v device 1a or less, including the Digitakt or Digitone. You can run a Digitakt or Digitone for 2+ hours with a tiny credit card sized 5000mah $10 cell phone power bank using one of these Ripcords or use your laptop as a power source in a pinch.
The Digitakt is definitely the longest running, easiest to power metal Elektron box via battery and Ripcord and most portable of any of the metal boxes. But I’m willing to bet the Model:Samples or Model:Cycles would be even less power hungry and certainly more portable.
As a tangent, nothing beats the 1010 music blackbox when it comes to pure portability and maximum battery power runtime. Not as deep as any Elektron but far cheaper and far smaller than most with up to 1TB sample capacity via microSD card and ability to sequence midi and both stream and record samples hours long, you can use it much more comfortably in a hammock or connect it to something like Modal CraftSynth or Roland Boutique and get more sound design power, though simplicity suffers connecting 2 boxes together with cables. It also has 3 stereo outputs which is great for any sort of analog mixing. Two blackboxes connected to a DJ mixer is like fitting 4 CDJs in your pocket that can also act like drum machines, samplers, portable recorders or MIDI sequencers. The Elektrons go deeper on most fronts but the versatility and portability of the blackbox for the price is unbeatable and it makes a great companion to any Elektron box, particularly the ones that cannot sample. Something to think about if you want the most portable, use anywhere setup currently available…
