Undead Battery

The Undead™ battery is alive!

Undead is a 9V and variable output power supply that mimics dying batteries that give new and interesting tones on fuzz and distortion pedals. With Undead, there’s no need to keep a cache of specially selected half-dead batteries for that perfect fuzz tone! Simply dial in the voltage tone you like and keep it there.
The bypass switch allows the incoming 9V supply through, or switches in the lower Undead voltage, potentially providing two tones from one pedal.

Inspiration
A 9V battery will provide useful energy down to around 5.5V, at which point the output will fall to nothing – dead. Certain fuzz and distortion pedals sound great when the 9V battery is undead, but not fresh! Some fuzz owners actually save these batteries ready to use, so here’s where the Undead comes in! It’s designed to emulate the dying battery condition of alkaline batteries for fuzz and similar effects units.

Learn more in the release blog post!

Operation
Connect power in and out with regular center-negative 2.1mm cables. (In on the right, out on the left, as normal signal flow, looking from the top.)
The footswitch is a toggle function, supporting two modes –

  • 9V bypass. LED is green. Input supply is passed to the output. Pot has no effect, just looks tempting…
  • Undead battery. LED is red. Output is reduced from 8V (pot fully clockwise) to around 5.4V (pot fully counter clockwise)

    • Specifications
    Takes an input of 9V, which can be passed to the output, or reduces the voltage over a range of about 8V (about 1V lower than the incoming supply) down to about 5.4V.
    Electrically silent and electrically bombproof design – featuring output short circuit protection and thermal shutdown if you drive it beyond specs. It comes back to life when it has cooled down – no fuses needed for the Undead! Input reverse voltage protection.
    Maximum continuous output load current is 300mA. (Most pedals operate around tens of mA.)

    We recommend using the pedal on 9V only. That said, 12V is safe and will provide output voltages from around 11V down to 8.4V), but 18V input operation is NOT supported.
    The Undead must only be used on pedals that can safely operate over the output voltage specified – ie no pedals that must have a high input voltage for internal regulators etc. Thankfully, this means almost all fuzz and distortion pedals are fine! Reach out if we can help with any concerns.