Yeah those batteries are like $9 each (I buy Samsung 18650/27100s for my vaporizer) but then you get to put the battery pack together yourself..

Ever seen an 18650 when it gets shorted?

from what’s commonly said about these kinds of battery technologies, they are not recommended to be kept fully charged for long periods of time. also not to be kept depleted for long periods either. they usually call it a storage state. so if you are going to leave them in the same state for a long period, then that state is usually recommended as being 50% charge. so if you have one plugged in permanently and in a full state of charge because it’s constantly connected to external power, then you are not meeting the recommendations for the storage state. in fact, you are technically constantly at the one extreme end of the unrecommended states. e.g. if the battery was idling at 50%, it should theoretically last much longer that way.



anyhow, it looks to me like the MPC Battery may be fairly specific. looks like the charging controller is attached to the battery pack itself and it also looks like it could be either a cell balancing charge controller board, which can carry out balance charging, or it might be the types which just deplete all the cells which are over the cells which have the lowest voltage of all the cells. though there looks to be something like eight charging wires into the board on the cell pack. that’s a fairly unusually high amount of wires to be having to feed into to the actual board. so maybe it also has some of the cell level sensing and charging circuitry also one of the MPC's PCB. if it does have both those, it could be a pretty sophisticated setup.
https://fccid.io/png.php?id=3484158&page=1

this guy reckons that this other pack meets the specification of the internal MPC cell pack, but its geometry is different and would have to be constructed in such a way, that it could be easily opened out without having to desolder, or having to detach any of the metal connecting strips. also the control and wire count is lower than the MPC’s pack. you might be able to pull one apart and then attach the MPC’s controller along with the wiring, but the controller board itself would have to be working and not be the thing which has failed. because it could be really hard to find the same controller board strapped to that pack. so it’s not looking good imo.
https://www.mpc-forums.com/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=183993

this is supposed to be a close up of the cell pack but it doesn’t have the same colouring on the wires as the one with the opened up MPC. but it looks like it could the one, because you don’t find many cell packs in those series configurations which provide 14.8 volt. it’s also unusual in that it has that high a wire count, on that kind of pack geometry and at that kind of voltage.
https://i.imgur.com/zulyirq.png

I really wouldn't like to have to get all the required ducks in a row to replace that pack.
it would be nice if the charge system was smart enough to be able to be told by the MPC software,
to remain at a 50% charge state, for anyone wanting to keep on external power.

Hey my friends, I know I don't post as much to this thread these days (or GS generally) but that's really just because I've been busy.

Thought you might like to see a tune I've worked on that was produced about 80% in the MPC. This one has vocals and acoustic instruments, so once I had a sketch I brought it into the DAW for refinements. But the whole song and all electronic sounds were produced directly in the MPC initially.

Only just uploaded today. Hope you like.

This is likely why it died so fast. To all other Live II owners: DO NOT LEAVE YOUR LIVE II PLUGGED IN AND CHARGING 24/7!!!! Keeping lithium-ion batteries at a constant charge state of 100% will greatly reduce their life. The perfect "storage" level is anywhere between 20%-50%.

Please read:

https://batteryuniversity.com/articl...ased-batteries

I usually charge my MPC Live II to 100%, and then take it off the charger and let it discharge if not being used. And even when I am in an active production session, I'll run it off the battery until it hits around 20-30%, and then throw it on the charger and bring it up to 80% before pulling it again. My Live II is now going on 3 years old and I can still get almost 5 hours run time on the battery when I need to.

I think you mean MH12210.

https://www.batteryjunction.com/pana...650b-3400.html

If my Live II's battery does die, I'll absolutely remove it and unwrap the package to see what batteries are inside. If I can re-build my own battery pack for $40 USD, I'll absolutely do that!

Edit: Ooooooo - same batteries for only $7.50 USD on sale as of 1/25/2023:

https://www.orbtronic.com/batteries-...cell-ncr18650b

if you ever do do it and pull it off, I'd really like to know what you did and what you used to do it.
especially if you find the same charge controller they used.

If I do it, I'd re-use the factory charge controller. Literally the only thing I'd switch out would be the lithium-ion battery cells. De-soldering and re-solding is a fairly easy affair, even on batteries.