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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
As far as uses for piezo’s, don’t forget about adding weights and using them as accelerometers or vibration sensors.
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)
Nice, I will actually try this one. I bought some pile of crap one for 7 dollars a while ago thinking “how bad could it be?” It really exceeded my expectations for crap.
Yes! This was what I used to do back in highschool! Man, what a feeling!
Nice Stuff… Keep It Up.