Has Duracell Solved the Rechargable Problem
I’ve written many times about the problems with rechargable batteries, so I am anxious to try out Duracell’s newest attempt to make this concept work. Carrying the tongue twister name of Duracell Pre-Charged Rechargable Batteries, these nickel metal hydride (NiMH) cells have a couple of features that should be viewed as an advantage.
Nickel metal hydride technology is a lot more stable than other rechargable technologies and it allows Duracell to sell this product pre-charged. You can use them right out of the package. Even if they are a year old. This ability to hold a charge (and hopefully not leak while doing so) means that the problem of the rechargables needing to be charged periodically even if they are not used may have been solved.
It has yet to be seen if these new batteries will have a constant and predictable discharge curve that will make them applicable for wireless microphones.
Unfortunately, there is at least one downside. the suggested retail price for a package of four AA is $12.99!
GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands.
Duracell Continues Move Towards A Sale
Proctor and Gamble has made a major move towards confirming rumors about the sale of its Duracell division with the announcement that The Blackstone Group has been retained to advise it on finding a buyer. The Duracell brand generates over $2 billion in annual battery sales, so this is a very big deal. The sale price may reach as high as $7 billion dollars.
While Duracell remains healthy, it apparently is not generating the sort of growth numbers that P&G expects to see. It has been clear from the point of view of distributors that P&G did not meet the same standards for dealer support that had been provided by Gillette when they owned the brand. It will be interesting to see if a new owner can improve product delivery.
P&G has owned the ProCell brand for well over a year, yet there is still no reference to the product on their own web site. Not even a link directly to the duracell.com/procell web site. A “brand” search at the P&G website doesn’t even acknowledge the Procell brand.
The Blackstone Group is an international leader in the area of mergers and acquisitions, so the public announcement that they are involved in this project means that a change is inevitable. Check back here regularly for updates.
GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. We’re a great source for entertainment industry news too!
I Can’t Believe There Isn’t A Better Way
One of my favorite household products is WD-40. I probably use it everyday and you might find a dozen or more cans around my house and shop at any given time. There’s not much it won’t do. It’s sort of like duct tape, just in a spray version.
I bought a new can yesterday and was amazed to see that they still attach the nozzle to the side of the can with a piece of cellophane tape. The same as they have done for 40 or more years. Its not a good solution.
Believe me, I’m all for anything that uses tape, and the makers of WD-40 must use miles of the stuff, one inch at a time, to attach these removable nozzles. The nozzle (just a plastic straw, really) is necessary to get the lubricant/solvent/penetrant into hard-to-reach places but there’s no place to put it when you want to put the cap back on the can. So, you lose the nozzle long before you use up what is in the can.
Rumor has it that the WD-40 company is preparing to release a new type of can with a feature called “Smart Straw“. I hope it works as well as WD-40 does.
GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. We’re here with great supplies for work and home.
Growth of Adhesive Tape Industry
My Google news alerts this morning pointed to a report about the anticipated growth of the pressure sensitive tape industry over the next several years. The report projects strong growth through 2010. Shurtape (the maker of 665 gaffers tape) sure thinks so.
Shurtape now has a new 130,000 square foot distribution facility in Hickory, NC . That’s room for a whole lot of tape. This new center has 45 foot ceilings, 33 loading docks, and there is room to grow. The Shurtape facility is the anchor tenant of the Catawba Industrial Business Park a 45 acre development in Catawba County.
Shurtape’s acquisition of the Arts & Entertainment division of Permacel, along with their strategic alliance with Pro Tapes and Specialties assures that they will be at the center of these rosy growth projections.
GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. Count on us to meet your pressure sensitive tape needs.
A Must For Every AV Techs Tool Box
Having been a sound man for many years, I got used to dragging around lots of specialized tools necessary to get a complicated audio job done. If I had to give up all but one, here’s what I would keep.
The Nady CT6 Cable Tester is a wonderful tool and a really great value. Its a quick way to take the guesswork out of cable testing and a “must have” for on-the-go trouble shooting. This pocket-sized device has ports to test cables with all the major audio connectors, inclucing XLR, Speakon, 1/4 inch (both 2 and 3 conductor) RCA, banana plug and 5 pin Mini-DIN. It also has connectors for test leads so you can test a cable that can’t be plugged directly into the tester.
Finally, it has a test tone that will let you determine continutity without even looking at the tester’s LED display.
This rugged device packaged in a tough metal case with good quality screened labeling will work for months on a single 9v battery.
We keep one in our rental department to make sure that every cable with an outgoing rental gets checked.
Got an audio tool you can’t live without? Share it with us!
GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. Count on us to meed your audio needs.
Great New USB Microphone Preamp
My son and I have been involved in recording my wife playing the piano so she can make some CD’s for her Mother. It has been a fun project, but a lot more complicated than it ought to be.
I was able to provide a couple of professional quality microphones and a mixer, and we run the mixer output into my son’s MacBook Pro, record and edit, and then burn a CD with the Mac. This works very well, but requires a lot of equipment that most people don’t have. It doesn’t matter how great the software for recording and editing on the computer might be, as long as you have to use the microphone that is installed in the computer, your chances of getting a quality recording are very limited.
The MicPort from CEntrance makes this job a whole lot easier. The MicPort is a microphone preamp that lets you plug one or more professional grade microphones directly into your computer, no mixer needed.
The MicPort is a simple inline device that accepts a professional low impedance microphone into one end and delivers the ouput to a USB port on the other end. Now any microphone using a standard XLR connector can be hooked up directly to your computer. This handy little preamp even has a volume control and a headphone output so you can monitor the output of the mic without the annoying delay time you encounter when using a mic through the computer headphone jack. The MicPort even has the ability to apply phantom power so that professional grade condenser mics can be plugged into the computer without the use of an outboard power supply. The whole device is powered from the computer’s USB port, so you don’t even need batteries!
The addition of a MicPort from CEntrance will let anyone involved in field recording leave the mixer at home and get professional quality recordings with just a microphone and a computer. Or, it’s a great way to get an instant increase in audio quality for your podcast.
I’m looking forward to trying it out.
GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. Look to us first to meet your recording supply needs.
Did Perry Mason Need An LCD Projector?
Jeff
Posted in batteries, extension cords, mic cables, microphones & mic stands, Pro Sound, tape
—
No Comments ↓
It’s always interesting to stumble upon a new type of customer for our products, and I have noticed recently that we are getting more and more orders from lawyers and courts. I had not thought much about it until I stumbled on this blog posting.
More and more lawyers offices and courts are struggling with the technical demands of media coverage and the need for tech savy technicians in the courtroom. Many courthouses date back to the earlier half of the twentieth century and they are woefully behind when it comes to providing the kind of support that is now expected by the legal profession, the media and the public. Its not unusual to enter a courtroom now and find mic cables and extension cords held down with gaffers tape all over the room. If the proceedings are high profile, this tangle of cables may stream out the door, down the stairs and out into the street.
The need for audio visual supplies now often extends back to the attorneys’ offices as well. Many law firms have whole departments that are involved in preparing presentation materials for courtroom work. This now extends far beyond the realm of flip charts to include professionally produced videos, wireless mics, enhanced audio recordings and computer-based presentations.
While it is unfortunate that these technical demands may be overwhelming the courtroom, its a great thing that high tech tools are available to participants in the cases.
GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. Look to us first to meet your audio visual supply needs.
Is Our Quest Finally Over?
We’ve been struggling with a solution for temporary gym floor marking for about a year now, and it looks like we may have finally solved a vexing problem.
I had a chance to attend the home opener for UNC’s Womens Volleyball Team (congratulations on your win over Villanova) as part of the Carolna Classic at Carmichael Auditorium.
We have been working closely with Joe Sagula, UNC’s coach this fall, and he has graciously helped us to test Permacel 724 Paper Tape for temporary gym floor marking. He’s been a great help.
The floor at Carmichael is an historic one. This is where Michael Jordan led a UNC team in their home games as they marched toward the 1982 NCAA mens basketball championship. Floor damage would be out of the question.
I watched several matches on Friday and the Permacel 724 seemed to hold up very well. The temporary lines were amazingly straight and the end lines (the ones that really take a beating) held up to heavy foot traffic. This gym floor also serves as the home for UNC’s womens basketball team, so it sees a lot of temporary floor markings.
Thanks in part to the thorough testing at UNC, we have tentatively arranged for the US Volleyball Assoc. to endorse this product and we have seen sales to lots of other NCAA volleyball programs.
It was frustrating for us when the makers of SafeOff were unwilling to stand behind their product, but we did not hesitate to drop them.
We are grateful to Shurtape, the makers of 724, for stepping up to the line.
GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. Look to us first to meet your floor marking needs.
A New Way For The Internet To Make You Bigger Then Make You Smaller
Occasionally, I get a call (a complaint, really) from a customer who is unhappy because a tape product they ordered was described as being two inches wide, but turned out to really be only about 1 7/8″ in width. They’re not happy, and I don’t blame them. This is usually someone who wants to use tape as a trim or binding product rather than for securing cables, and they discover that they did not get what they expected. All we can do is apologize, refund their money and honor our guarantee.
We’ve been selling tape for a long time and the change in width came about 5 or 6 years ago. Rather than raise prices, all the major US domestic tape manufacturers changed their standard from being two inches wide to 48 mm wide. For most users, this did not really impact their ability to use the tape and they never noticed the change.
Unfortunately, the tape makers changed the width but did not change the description. The metric equivilent is usually marked in parentheses on the box (each 1 inch in width is actully 24 mm) but this info rarely appears in the tape description and some manufacturers fail to acknowledge the disrepancy at all.
Odder still, while tape makers converted to metric equivilents for tape widths, they continued to use the imperial measuring standard for lengths. Most tape continues to be offered in the industry standard of 60 yds. Nobody really has an explanation for mixing the two standards. It really servers the manufacturer and no one else.
We have include info on this width standard in our website, but as long as the major manufacturers continue to label standard gaffers tape and duct tape as being two inches in width, we’ll have to stick with their standard.
GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. Look to us first to meet your gaffers tape needs.