I think the 9v battery in a non-Series Alembic should last better than a year. So spending several hundred dollars to save a couple dollars a year does seem impractical. However, as far as the effect on tone, I do seem to recall that someone one posted that he had noticed that he liked the effect on his tone when his battery was almost exhausted, i.e. when the voltage started to drop. If I recall correctly, Mica had suggested adding a resistor or something so that the voltage from a new battery would be reduced. Other than that, there may have been a couple of posts where people asked about going from one battery to two batteries, i.e. 18 volts. And I can't recall at the moment what Mica had to say about that, but it might be worth a search.
