Uses for piezo pickups

[Asarge519]

Hey everyone, I just recently ended up with a few piezo style pickups, the round disc kind. I was just wondering if anyone on here has done any cool experimenting with these? I want to try and build some sort of guitar effect potentially but haven't had any luck finding such a thing, if it is even possible. Thanks!

[GibsonGM]

You could do a lot with them!  Try hooking one up to your electric, near the bridge (don't ruin your nice axe, LOL), and mix the dirty and clean signals...you can get an 'almost acoustic' thing going with them.   Fancy versions of this use one transducer for each string, but you might be able to make something presentable, and preamp it.

You could also theoretically use them as a sensor of some sort...to monitor something you 'do', changing some effect parameter.  Like the way the treadle changes your wah pot's setting...you might be able to set up some kind of pressure thing with a piezo. 

[Mark Hammer]

...or mount 'em on the surface of the guitar, and bang on the guitar to produce envelope voltages unrelated to picking strength.

You can also try just mounting them on the surface and blending their sound with the mag pickups.  Note that this will require a suitable high input-impedance preamp (but easily done with a plain vanilla TL072).

[stallik]

Mississippi drum machine. Box, jack, piezo disk. Best results by mounting the disk by the edge only. Turn up base, watch the volume. Will pick up big differences from box material and type of sole

[Electron Tornado]

Use them as pickups in a cigar box guitar.

[therecordingart]

-Tape them to the body of an acoustic guitar
-Attach one to a piece of wood and plug into an amp. Tap your foot on it and use as a makeshift bass drum.
-Make drum triggers
-Crush them up and snort them Probably not the best idea

[psychedelicfish]

Try attaching one to the body of your guitar, then feed your (amplified) guitar signal back into it.

[deadastronaut]

whack em to produce light..

http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/main.php/v/chickpea/DRUMLIGHTS.jpg.html

its a 386 btw..

[Morocotopo]

Attach them to your electric but inside the body, in the pot /mics cavity, there it won´t fall off, you can glue it without fear of ruining the finish. A small high impedance preamp, a stereo jack, a battery, an external blend box and instant (well, not so instant) dual mic guitar. Who needs a Parker?

[wavley]

Who needs a Parker?

Maybe it's a good thing Paul Marossy is taking a break so he won't read that. 

[R.G.]

Micro-frisbees?

[Mark Hammer]

You can (carefully) solder one end of a small flexible spring to the middle of a disc, epoxy the other end of the spring to the dustcap of a small speaker, use a 386 to drive the speaker, and a JFET to amplify the output of the piezo disc, and make your own mini reverb unit.  (It works.  I've done it.)

[deadastronaut]

^ that sounds mad... i'd love to hear that.

[Mark Hammer]

It sounds like a cheap reverb is how it sounds.

[amptramp]

Most people have a piezo sensor as a knock detector in their cars.  If you want to be able to listen in on your car, check this out:

http://www.autospeed.com/cms/A_0348/article.html

followed by part 2:

http://www.autospeed.com/cms/article.html?&A=0353

[FUZZZZzzzz]

http://m.bareille.free.fr/ds7clone/ds8.htm