Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

I have an ABR 800 which I use in the studio with a 240 to 110 transformer as I am in the UK

I have the need for a one off location shoot and don't want to go to the expense of buying a Vagabond just for one shoot, I have a 20AH battery I can use from a golf caddy, my question is what size invertor would I need, I have a 300w (500w peak) one already for some of my other US stuff but this is not man enough for the ARB 800.

Can anyone tell me what size the PSI900GF inverter is ?

It's a 300W Pure Sine Wave Inverter.

RMS

It's actually a 400W proprietary pure sine inverter with extended current limiting capability. I have reports that a Samilex 150W inverter and 7-10AH 12V battery will perform satisfactorily. This is similar to the inverters used in the original Vagabond unit. Some sine wave inverters have appropriate current limit while others don't.

Must be a problem with my invertor then as it takes about 10 seconds to recycle, I thought perhaps it was not big enough but size wise sounds like it's ok, will have to get in touch with the manufacturers.
many thanks for your help.

Most off-the-shelf inverters are not designed for studio flash and may do all sorts of funny things. A 300W inverter should recycle a single ABR800 at close to the powerline rate of 1 second. Samilex inverters generally work OK, but they also have made some versions that don't behave. We recently got a 150W Samilex inverter for testing and it did pretty well.

There should be no difference in inverter performance between an ABR800 and AB800.