Would this work?

[inverseroom]

I've been thinking about ways to make an absolutely crappy, plastic-sounding, but still musical distortion.  While looking at a Smokey mini-amp, I got to wondering: could you take a little mini-amp circuit, output it to a tiny speaker about the size of a quarter, and then have, glued face-to-face with the speaker, a piezo element, which would pick up the sound and send it to the output?  Both the speaker and piezo element could distort.  The whole thing would be enclosed in a stompbox that would actually make faint noises when you used it.

I like the idea of something mechanical happening in a stompbox--like the optical vibrato in old Yamaha organs, or, in this case, actual sound being transferred through the air.

[brad]

What about taking the speakers out of a pair of those terrible little earphone things, sticking them together, and rigging one as a speaker and one as a microphone?

[squidsquad]

I love stuff like this.  Tinkering outside the envelope.  The closeness of the speaker & mike or PU would also play a role: close for more bottom, further for more highs.  It MAY sound like crap...on the other hand...might be way cool!

[inverseroom]

Yeah, my main concern is that it wouldn't sound crappy enough!  I like the idea of using the two headphone speakers.  Gotta go to Rat Shack today, let's see if I get any inspiration...