"I was wondering if somebody could suggest a rechargeable battery pack that I could use for my Sony D8. I need one that could be used for stealth and non stealth taping. Any brand suggestions and sources? I'm sick of buying batteries and getting all nervous while recording when the e light starts flashing, that sucks."
There are lots of expensive products. I built my own internal pack that gets killer hours: approx 30 hours for 4 D cells and 15 hours for 4 C cells.
I bought:
One 4 D cell battery holder
One 4 C cell battery holder
Two 2 wire trailer connectors @ auto parts store, should be 16 guage
One dowel rod the size of a AA battery
A length of 16 gauge two conductor speaker wire, one side red, other black
Cut dowels to the length of a AA battery.
Solder one end of trailer connector to each battery sled. Making sure to connect them so the same end is similar on both holders (i.e., red wire plug is covered for both sleds) allowing you to interchange battery sleds. I use C cells for stealth and D cells for all other occaisions. Connect red to positive side and black to negative.
Strip one end of wire, flatten strands of wire out and solder. I flattened them out to allow a greater surface area to assure a good connection. Connect one trailer harness end to the wire.
You need to file a small opening in the battery compartment door on the D8 and on your internal battery sled to allow the wire to come out.
Now when you need long lasting batteries, you route the wires down into the internal sled and place appropiate polarity of wire in the sled and hold them in place with dowels. Place this inside the deck, route wires out of the hole and plug in the appropriate size external battery sled.
Leo Lombardo sells something similar for $90 each for C and D cells. The one I built above uses about $12 of material and allows you to interchange between C's and D's. I also built a trailer harness with alligator clips so I can clip onto a lantern cell. That baby will probably give about 100 hours for a $6.00 battery!!!
Best thing about the whole thing is not only is it about $12 in parts and about an hour in build time, but you get to used you internal battery meter.
I used the above at High Sierra and recorded about 23 hours of music, I then used the four same D Cells to record further. During Rusted Root it finally switched down the the last segment on the internal meter. I finished off both Hot Tuna and TOO and then listened to the show on the way home, an hour drive. I probably have another 2 to 4 hours on the batteries which I tossed, but hey, what the hell, I got 27 hours out of one set of D cells.
Charles