Take a dead 9v battery and peel back the top. You can push the cells out from the bottom. 

Save the plastic or cardboard bottom from the battery and clip the top part where the connections are from the cells.

Solder a red wire to the back of the smallest connector (positive) and a dark wire to the large connector (negative).

Get a glue gun nice and hot and cover the wired area thickly. 
Press the back you had saved on there and hold it down. It's ok if glue squeezes out, you can trim it later.

Press the back you had saved on there and hold it down. It's ok if glue squeezes out, you can trim it later.

Twist the wires and you now have a battery snap that is better than most you can buy in shops.

   To power multiple effects a lot of musicians are purchasing products like Voodoo Labs Pedal Power, Godlyke, One Spot, Dunlop Brick etc. It is a good idea to power your pedals with conditioned DC with isolated grounds to reduce hum, for general safety and for the good of the environment by not using batteries that slowly rot in landfills leaking toxic chemicals into the earth for thousands of years. But these units have their limitations, and these limitations can manifest themselves with strange noises that make you think there is something wrong with a certain effect and a bill for a repair person to realize there's nothing wrong with your pedals.

   Each manufacturer of these power units give you a current draw limitation. For the most part, analog effects draw very little current so you have nothing to worry about, it's when you start adding fancy digital modulation effects amongst your chain that you could potentially run into problems. Something like the Line 6 DL4 can use up to 300 mA of current, and if it doesn't get it things get strange. Try running that with your compressor, booster, distortion, phaser and wah pedal and you could start running into weird squeals and nasty hissing that you just can not track down. More than once I have had a client bring their pedal board in and all they needed was a rewiring of the power outputs of his Pedal Power since he had high current draw pedals on the wrong DC output. 

   Read the manual of your power supply unit to find the maximum current draw for each isolated output. Also realize that anything digital (Digital Delay, many Chorus, Flanger, Phasers, Loop Stations, Digital Modeling pedals etc) suck up the juice like crazy (which is why a lot of them don't have the option to run off batteries) and need special treatment. They are also the ones that can be the source of the problem with power all units.

   Follow this link to look for the current draw of various name brands. You will also find instructions on how to test your pedals current draw if you can't find it on the list.
http://stinkfoot.se/power-list

Love the sound of a Germanium Fuzz but not the flabby low end? Here is a Rousetech Fuzz with piggybacked silicon transistors designed to emulate the sound of germanium, but a little tighter.

Dark and smooth with great clean up from the volume pot of the guitar. The fuzz is on full for this entire clip, the guitars volume is adjusted up and down to show the tonal range of the pedal.

I set my collector voltages on Germanium Fuzz pedals at around 5.5 volts to squeeze a little more gain out the circuit. I discovered that the voltage drops when the guitar signal passes through and the harmonics change when the note decays and the voltage returns to normal. Interesting.

When combined with certain fuzz effects, the Anthony Leo fuzz creates a faux reverse kind of effect. It's a swelling that works only on tube amps and when the effect has a fresh power supply. Sounds great.

I never cared for the stock tone of a DS-1. Too crinkly, midless and Bossy for my taste.
Here's a mod that turns it into a nasty gain filled bastard.

Trying out a couple different Jfets and adjusting the bias was a pretty big shock. The suggested 4.5v biasing of the Jfets doesn't seem to wring out the maximum amount of gain and also alters the EQ a bit. I noticed adjusting trimmer 3 to enhance the gain and trimmer 4 brought up the bass a bit. Any time I adjusted a couple trimmers, the others had to be adjusted as well to balance out the sound. All in all I think it's a good idea to start with 4.5v on the drain of the Jfet's and fine tune by ear from then on.

One of the things I've always loved about Feedback Loops pedals like the Rousetech Flux is the way Analog Delay pedals react to them. When the mix knob is set just right (meaning it's not producing an ear splitting squeal that'll get you evicted) the volume knob on the guitar can drive the pedal into oscillation.

   I left Trenton Ontario to move to Toronto in 2004 to attend Humber College's guitar program and get my playing career going. Seven years later I still haven't made as much as i used to make playing the bars in the Quinte area. Wanna know why? Nobody cares about how well you play the guitar. In Toronto, people would rather hire somebody they know who is somewhat proficient than a smokin' player. Case in point, I went to check out a friend playing at a bar in the east end some time ago and he had a guitarist who had attended Humber and was popular amongst his friends. This guy had a Bachelors Degree in Music by the way. His playing was boring as shit and he stood on the stage like he needed to poop for two hours. This guy is in at least ten bands in the city. Why? Because he is fun to hang out with, or he is a nice guy or aiousefoiaweganeaklwefoiawefhipoa. Whatever. you get the point right?
   
   The guitar doesn't matter any more to a lot of people. As long as someone is holding one on stage and hitting it with some degree of rhythmic accuracy nobody cares. The most important thing is "can I hang out with this guy/girl after the gig and does he/she agree with everything I say?". Toronto is a tough city to be a guitarist in if you are the stereotypical introverted artist. 
My advice to guitarists, ignore singers. They get gigs because the average listener needs to hear words to understand anything. Ignore crowds because they are filled with people who hear with their eyes. Ignore money because it will only make you feel worthless.