Changed battery on Fishman Loudbox Charge - Still problems

[Odedi]

Hi,
So I changed the battery on my amp to a new one.

Recharge time took about 9 - 10 hours (Just like the first time I recharged my Mini).

However, there seems to be the same issue like with the previous battery. A bit after fully charging the amp, I connect the charger again and it takes forever to charge it to it's full capacity.

Before, whenever I connected the charger after the amp was fully charged, it would charge for a few seconds and the yellow light would turn off.
Now it takes so much time. At least an hour or two!

I am not sure what the problem is..
Is it the battery's fault which is discharging too fast? Was the new battery faulty too?
Or is the charger not charging it very well?

How can I know?

[Lost Sheep]

I have a Loudbox Mini Charge.

It is fully charged (been plugged in for days). I unplugged the charger for a few seconds and plugged it back in. The yellow (Charging) light came on for a few seconds and went out.

Then I unplugged the charging cable and ran it for several minutes (no inputs, just sat there with the green lights on). Then plugged in the charger and the yellow charging light came on for three minutes and then went ouf.

It sounds to me like your battery is just not taking a charge, the charging circuit is not charging or the circuitry controlling the light is faulty. (Two of those you already thought)

I will sleep on it and see if anything pops into my head that might help, but those are the first things that came to me.

It really does sound like a warranty issue which probably can only be dealt with by Fishman.

(Edited to add
Last night I left my Loudbox Mini Charge off, but not charging. 24 hours later, I plugged in the charger. It kept the yellow "Charging" light on for about 3 minutes by my stopwatch. Then the yellow light shut off.

Clearly your unit is behaving differently.

[Odedi]

Originally Posted by Lost Sheep

I have a Loudbox Mini Charge.

It is fully charged (been plugged in for days). I unplugged the charger for a few seconds and plugged it back in. The yellow (Charging) light came on for a few seconds and went out.

Then I unplugged the charging cable and ran it for several minutes (no inputs, just sat there with the green lights on). Then plugged in the charger and the yellow charging light came on for three minutes and then went ouf.

It sounds to me like your battery is just not taking a charge, the charging circuit is not charging or the circuitry controlling the light is faulty. (Two of those you already thought)

I will sleep on it and see if anything pops into my head that might help, but those are the first things that came to me.

It really does sound like a warranty issue which probably can only be dealt with by Fishman.

Thanks!
I actually did some voltage checks.

The battery was quite full of charge.
Somewhere between 13.0 and 14.0.

I played for half an hour and the voltage was 12.9 when I was done.

The battery seems fine. The older one seemed fine too when I checked the voltage.

I do not understand however, why it keeps on charging for so long when it's between the 13.0 and 14.0 spectrum. The yellow light just keeps going forever.

Either it's overcharging it , or it's a faulty light thing

[MarkF_48]

The Fishman manual shows a 10 hour charge time. I recently bought a small Alesis amp that has an SLA battery. When I first turned it on to charge it out of the box the charge light did not reach full charge after a day or two (suppose to charge in 5 hours). I took the charger off and just left the amp on for several hours to let the battery discharge, shut it off and let it set overnight. The next day I put it on charge again and after a few hours it did finally reach full charge. I don't know if the battery needs a couple charge/discharge cycles before the charging circuit lights recognize/learns what a full charge is.
Do you have any idea how long the amp can be left on before the battery discharges to the point where it doesn't function?
In your other thread you said you had an email into Fishman. Did you hear back from them yet?

This is from the Alesis manual regarding the battery. The Fishman manual doesn't seem to say much about the battery.

"Note: Before you first use the product, please fully charge the battery. Your unit was purposely shipped with a reduced battery charge to ensure safe transit.
Use the included power cable to connect the unit to a power outlet and let it charge for up to 5 hours. This helps ensure the longest life for your battery.

Rechargeable Batteries
Rechargeable lead-acid batteries are the same type used in automobiles. As with your car battery, how you use this battery has a significant impact on its lifespan. With proper use and treatment, a lead-acid battery can last for years. Here are some recommendations for getting the longest life from the internal battery.
General Usage
Fully charge the battery before using the speaker.
Charge the battery completely after each use.
Storage For best product longevity, do not store at exceedingly hot (greater than
90 °F / 32 °C) or exceedingly cold (less than 32 °F / 0 °C) temperatures.
It is acceptable to leave your speaker plugged in. This will not overcharge the
battery.
If you leave the battery level low and do not charge it for 6 months, it may
permanently lose capacity."

[Odedi]

Originally Posted by MarkF_48

The Fishman manual shows a 10 hour charge time. I recently bought a small Alesis amp that has an SLA battery. When I first turned it on to charge it out of the box the charge light did not reach full charge after a day or two (suppose to charge in 5 hours). I took the charger off and just left the amp on for several hours to let the battery discharge, shut it off and let it set overnight. The next day I put it on charge again and after a few hours it did finally reach full charge. I don't know if the battery needs a couple charge/discharge cycles before the charging circuit lights recognize/learns what a full charge is.
Do you have any idea how long the amp can be left on before the battery discharges to the point where it doesn't function?
In your other thread you said you had an email into Fishman. Did you hear back from them yet?

This is from the Alesis manual regarding the battery. The Fishman manual doesn't seem to say much about the battery.

"Note: Before you first use the product, please fully charge the battery. Your unit was purposely shipped with a reduced battery charge to ensure safe transit.
Use the included power cable to connect the unit to a power outlet and let it charge for up to 5 hours. This helps ensure the longest life for your battery.

Rechargeable Batteries
Rechargeable lead-acid batteries are the same type used in automobiles. As with your car battery, how you use this battery has a significant impact on its lifespan. With proper use and treatment, a lead-acid battery can last for years. Here are some recommendations for getting the longest life from the internal battery.
General Usage
Fully charge the battery before using the speaker.
Charge the battery completely after each use.
Storage For best product longevity, do not store at exceedingly hot (greater than
90 °F / 32 °C) or exceedingly cold (less than 32 °F / 0 °C) temperatures.
It is acceptable to leave your speaker plugged in. This will not overcharge the
battery.
If you leave the battery level low and do not charge it for 6 months, it may
permanently lose capacity."

Hey,
So Fishman said I should go to my local music store and hand the amp to them.

The sla battery is already full at like 12.7 V or so.
The charger keeps charging it beyond that to 14.43v (which takes a couple of minutes) and then its either stuck there charging and keeping the charge, or goes up really slowly to a certain amount of voltage which then tells the charger to stop.
I am not sure which of these may be true, because I have only seen it being stuck on 14.43 for 10 minutes.

Charging beyond 12.7v seems kind of useless because it drops all of that voltage back to 12.7 in a couple of minutes.
My amp just hangs in that high Voltage area for a while for some reason , which is quite dangerous for the battery if its done for a long time.

[YamaYairi]

You have to determine if the battery is being charged fully. To do that you have to operate it under a load. You probably don't have the test equipment to do that, so just play through the amp at a decent volume and see how long it takes for the battery to die. If it's not being charged it will probably not take very long. If you go over an hour, I'd say the battery is being charged but the charging circuit is not detecting that the battery is fully charged. It is unlikely you would have 2 defective batteries. Once you have done this test you can go into the store and properly describe the problem. That will go a long way to getting it repaired properly.

[Lost Sheep]

Originally Posted by YamaYairi

You have to determine if the battery is being charged fully. To do that you have to operate it under a load. You probably don't have the test equipment to do that, so just play through the amp at a decent volume and see how long it takes for the battery to die. If it's not being charged it will probably not take very long. If you go over an hour, I'd say the battery is being charged but the charging circuit is not detecting that the battery is fully charged. It is unlikely you would have 2 defective batteries. Once you have done this test you can go into the store and properly describe the problem. That will go a long way to getting it repaired properly.

A "LoadTest"? I wonder if your local auto shop could help.

[Odedi]

Yep, so the question is at what voltage it's considered full charge.
Because it went upto 14.43V and still didnt activate the program that shuts it off.

**The battery work well. I played for a couple of hours last night.

[Lost Sheep]

Originally Posted by Odedi

Yep, so the question is at what voltage it's considered full charge.
Because it went upto 14.43V and still didnt activate the program that shuts it off.

**The battery work well. I played for a couple of hours last night.

Update to my earlier post.

Last night I left my Loudbox Mini Charge off, but not charging. 24 hours later, I plugged in the charger. It kept the yellow "Charging" light on for about 3 minutes by my stopwatch. Then the yellow light shut off.

Clearly your unit is behaving differently.

[Odedi]

**Update**
It seems like now everything is working well, and the charger knows when to stop charging!!

I didn't do anything, it just fixed itself 😅

[MarkF_48]

Originally Posted by Odedi

**Update**
It seems like now everything is working well, and the charger knows when to stop charging!!

I didn't do anything, it just fixed itself 😅

That's pretty much what my little Alesis battery amp did after a few cycles of using it and recharging. When I first got it and the battery seemed to never get to 100% charged I was looking for a replacement battery. I still have the replacement I found in my Amazon saved list.

[Odedi]

Great! I guess it just needed to do some cycling for a reason.

[Lost Sheep]

Originally Posted by Odedi

Great! I guess it just needed to do some cycling for a reason.

Seems likely, then. I bought my Loudbox Mini Charge from a previous owner, so apparently it was already "broken in".

Makers could save customers a lot of grief if they put a single paragraph in a flyer

"NEW OWNERS - new batteries have a 'break-in' period where they appear to take forever to charge. This is normal and will stop (and behave normally) after a few charging cycles."

I wonder if a battery, after not being used for a long time would exhibit the same behavior?

[Odedi]

Great idea!

The thing is, my fishman has started doing this after an incidient where I was using it ouside and the amp was turning off in the middle of a gig with red flashing LEDs.

Since then it has been taking forever to charge, which made me try a different battery.

So maybe it needed some time to heal or something!

[YamaYairi]

Originally Posted by Odedi

Great! I guess it just needed to do some cycling for a reason.

I suspect when you played it for 2 hours, that discharged it enough for it to go through a charge cycle.