Music Stand Light

My wife performs at a restaurant once a month. She has been doing this since 1974. Recently she asked me if I could adapt 1 of our traditional stand lights that needs to be plugged into an outlet to a battery operated one. 

I had actually done this last year when I needed a stand light with no access to an outlet.

I had taken the AC parts out of the light and just stuck in 2 LED units that I got from Harbor Freight.

These are units that they give out for free when you purchase other products. They are rated at 144 lumens per light, and since I used two that gave me 288 Lumens. Plenty for full stand coverage.

The problem is the switch. One click and it's a flashlight (at the end), another click turns it off. A third click turns on the broad beam, and finally a 4th click turns it off. When the light is turned off from the broad beam (for reading the music), the next click turns on the flashlight and shines to the side. I covered the flashlight part with electricians tape and that solved the problem, however 3 more times to get it back onto the broad beam gets to be bothersome. Another issue is that they run on three AAA batteries, which don't last very long.

I wanted to make it a little more compact, with a longer burn time per battery pack, and easier to change the batteries.

The light itself is in 3 sections-top cover, battery compartment, and the light w/lens and switch. I removed the top, cut the wires from the batteries, switch, and flashlight. I soldered new leads to the broad beam, cut a hole into the top and epoxied the top and bottom together (getting rid of the battery compartment altogether). This gave it a slimmer profile and lighter weight.

I then soldered the leads together and connected them to a zip cord and finally to a 9volt battery snap on connector. I used a 4 unit AA battery pack with a 9 volt battery connection for the new pack. Since the original system used only 3 batteries, I put a small bolt into one of the units to complete the circuit.

For the mount I cut down a sheet of ABS plastic, heated it and bent it to the angles I took from the original stand light. A 4 1/2" section of a music stand pencil holder was cut and used as the 'clip' for the mount. Since the clip and mount were both ABS plastic, I connected them (melted?) using M.E.K. which is a pretty volatile liquid that is highly flammable, it also produces toxic fumes and can damage the liver when wet. So I used this outside using nitrile gloves.

We now have an LED stand light that is much more effective than most of the ones on the market. It burns well over 2 hours per battery pack which can be switched out in a matter of seconds.