Sarno Black Box Mini?

[Robby Harris]

What’s your experience?

I’m particularly curious to hear from single coil players.
Brad has mentioned that those who have tried to rig a leg clip together for the standard unit experience excessive hum.
Is proximity to single coils still a factor with the mini? Or does the external power supply resolve this?

I welcome any other thoughts regarding the standard vs mini you may have! I’d like to pick one up, just a matter of weighing which one is best for me. Thanks!

[Jon Jaffe]

I tried it with a '75 Sho-Bud with an original pickup and also an '83 Kline U12. I did not notice any hum. I think they are essential for dialing in my tone live.

[Rich Ertelt]

The mini uses a wall wart, and comes with a leg clip. I have mine on my Mullen with a single coil (and had it on a GFI with single/lace/humbucker) and didn't notice it added any hum. Wall wart is on the floor, so not near the pickup.

I did replace the JJ 12ax7 with a Tung Sol RI. I'm not a big fan of JJ 12ax7s.

[Jon Jaffe]

I don't like power transformers either, but a battery option is available for the Mini. I power my TONEX One with an iPhone backup battery. And for reasons I won't go into, I had to use it to power the Mini for one set. It worked just fine for an hour. I didn't try it for all three hours of the gig. It will power a MacBook, so I assume it's not doing the Mini any harm.

[Brad Sarno]

Black Box MINI runs of 9v DC supply (tip negative like for every guitar pedal) and consumes about 535 milliamps. So you can do the math. Like a 2,000 mah 9v battery (milliamp-hours) should give about 4 hours of run time on a full battery. Just be sure it's 9v or very close.

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[Brad Sarno]

What’s your experience?

I’m particularly curious to hear from single coil players.
Brad has mentioned that those who have tried to rig a leg clip together for the standard unit experience excessive hum.
Is proximity to single coils still a factor with the mini? Or does the external power supply resolve this?....

There is actually NO hum involved anymore not only because the power supply is at the wall wart now, but also because even the wall wart doesn't make hum being a switching type supply. You can get the BB MINI as close as you want to a single coil pickup and there will be no hum or noise interference. It's also really handy to have the vari-z knob so accessible while playing for easy tone adjustments from song to song.

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