I stumbled on this simple, but effective and cheap diy guitar pickup in my rounds for interesting hacks. Piezo elements haven’t failed to amaze me. They’re usable for electronic drum kit, underwater microphones, running shoes and musical greeting cards.
(I’ve only found an old, out of print book on hydrophones, so if you’ve got a good reference, send it in.)
My piezo Hydromic underwater microphone is back up at;
http://ozvalveamps.elands.com/techsite/hydromic/hydromic.htm
You can also use them to make Scanning Tunnelling Microscopes for around 50 bucks.
Posted at 9:19 am on Feb 23rd, 2008 by Tachyon
I have on occasion wound electric guitar pickups. I also played around with piezo pickups also. I simple little diy transistor based pre-amp (to fix impedance) makes a world of difference on a piezo pickup, and does not add much cost.
Posted at 10:48 am on Feb 23rd, 2008 by Adam Ziegler
The fact that it works doesn’t surprise me, but with no preamp and a piezo of average quality, I can’t believe how good it sounds.
Posted at 6:42 pm on Feb 23rd, 2008 by Wolf
As far as uses for piezo’s, don’t forget about adding weights and using them as accelerometers or vibration sensors.
Posted at 6:45 pm on Feb 23rd, 2008 by Wolf
i did this with a piezo element from radioshack for my violin, it amazed my jazz group whenever they heard it. (plus it’s fun to go around telling people you built your own pickup)
Posted at 7:30 pm on Feb 23rd, 2008 by mikey g.
Yes! This was what I used to do back in highschool! Man, what a feeling!
Posted at 3:15 pm on Feb 26th, 2008 by Ovidiu - GuitarFlame.com
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I have done pretty much the exact same thing back in the 80’s when I was a poor and couldn’t afford to buy a nice electric acoustic that I dreamed of at the time.
Posted at 2:13 am on Feb 23rd, 2008 by Nipponese