The primary reason you are not getting a balanced sound, is that you are not impedance matched. Piezos need a preamp of some sort to impedance buffer before going into a 1/8" or 1/4" jack like you have. Effectively, it creates a high pass filter with the mismatched impedance, and that's what's making your sound tinny and full of harsh high frequencies.
Rod Elliott on ESP did a really good write up about this titled "Piezo pickup preamplifiers". You basically have two options. One is to present a very high input impedance to the piezo (probably 10Mohm or more). The other is to build a slightly unusual circuit called a charge amplifier that presents near 0 impedance to the piezo. If you're handy with electronics it's a good DIY project because there aren't many off the shelf options.
Yeah during uni myself and a few friends made about 20, then turned a moving wall room into a sonic art installation with various items for users to interact with. We made them all waterproof and had sections of it that were large water containers with rocks and stream sounds, sections of the floor that made sound when you walked over them and interactive plants. All running into a few laptops then with the sounds processed and being sent out of one of the 4 speakers in each corner. Good fun.
Thanks! This project is just what I was looking for to experiment with my kids. It's a great entry point into analog electronics and the link to physics :)
@@Tunkkis yes, but it has no scientific merit, and one could apply it to everything to make it sound better. Like it has some weight in an argument, but it's really just hot air.
@@EkelundDK Oh, absolutely. I wasn't arguing for the use of anecdotal evidence, though I can see how someone could interpret my comment that way. I only wished to point out that he didn't come up with the term.
this is amazing! love your videos and love the message at the end. i've been trying to learn an instrument for years, on and off. it never occurred to me that our skill level or knowledge is irrelevant to enjoy making music until i read "how music works" by david byrne. music is really for everyone in the same way love and food is. we don't discuss talent for those. it's part of being human.
I'll add that to my reading list. I do want to learn more about making music, since I've kind of given up learning how to play an instrument I want to explore the side of music production more.
Glue or tape on some mass to the air side of the piezo for a stronger signal and some interesting effects. Glue on a spring any I would guess you might have some echo.
Hey! My choice recording device is my smartphone. So I connected a piezo to a jack then use an adapter (jack - usb c) to connect it on my smartphone. Voice recorder app recognize there is an external microphone and indicate it will record from there. But it doesn’t receive any sound. Do you know what to do?
I have been seriously considering using the bar-style piezo pickups common for some stringed instruments, and inserting them into hollow tubing vs the more common solid front bar/bridge of a DIY kalimba. I feel thtis may well be an improvement over mounting the round disks on the outside of the body of the kalimba. From your experiments and experience, do you think this concept is way off base, or stands to capture much better signal-to noise? Edit: I should note I am speciafically considering solid-body kalimba here, as I kinda prefer the decentish (£20 on ali express) solid board styles to hollow bodies. Double edit: This far I'm largely been cannibalising the bodies of cheap kalimba with ok, but questionable at the high end, tines, and seehing how I can play with the tone using cheap brass (too soft to be long term practical), 'nickel silver' (well, 18% Chinese cupro-nickel like 18th century nickel silver or something) which is a bit soft at 0.8mm still, but tunes without mashing the tines at all and producers lower and more sonorous tones, and beryllium copper/'brass' (which is a pain to work with as it is hard as all hell, but it springs very nicely and similarly producers lower and more mellow tones which I much enjoy). (Both aluminiu and silicon bronze I hope to acquire low cost very soon, too) I unfortunately have puzzling to do on base material (dense solid wood blocks seem to produce very nice tone, but seem hard to work out where to get cheaply), and which some metal tubing/piping for the front and rear tension bars is a doddle, something for the important third part of the tensioning setup I'm rather clueless in acquiring/making without a lot of cost or tools to do required machining...)
Awesome little project, you got my sub! Have you tested wiring piezo pickups in series? All the know-how on the internet says to do it in parallel, but I can't find a single comparison of someone actually doing it! In magnetic pickups in guitars, wiring in series "doubles" the output of a single pickup while parallel halves it; in piezos it also halves it, which is why series sounds so compelling; piezos already have very low output and every bit helps.
Great! What's the five hole holder called, and where can I get it? The one looking like a piece of Lego Technic, but with screws in it. SOLVED: Grounding Bar, now I heard it in the video. Humbly, Ylan
Great video! I love the simplicity of those devices. I recall the first time I encountered these (late 1970s) in the fire alarm panels we maintained. I was new in the field of electronics and had not seen one before, they were used as audio trouble indicators in the fire panels. I thought they were some kind of modern day “black magic”, kind of like LEDs and Peltier devices. Put a little voltage in and out comes something totally different! “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” - Arthur C. Clarke
Yeah, they've always been a mystery to me too. I know that they worked, but not how, so I figured that's a great excuse to make a video and do my research! Especially so after finding that piezo siren and realizing just how freakishly loud they can be.
What do you use as a pre-amplifier and amplifier? What audio gain can you achieve? I want to record all the noises that are present in my home ......... . I have several of these 34mm piezo ones and I need to try!!! Any suggestions? Thank you.
how would you make a piezo into a speaker? could it be as simple as wiring it to a male 3.5mm jack and plugging it into a mixer? then manipulating the frequencies at different amped up db levels?? curious about that for a personal project...
I have piezo disk but i don't have mono Jack cable but i have 3.5mm cable. Can I use 3.5mm cable? And how to do it??? Please reply asap. I want to connect to phone so.
Not sure how well it would reproduce with a piezo, but hang a metal coat hanger from a string and flick the hanger. If you want to hear what it’s supposed to sound like, wrap the string around your finger, stick your finger in your ear, and flick. It sounds pretty amazing
This is so well made. I really appreciate all the information. It took me a lot of time to find all the necessary information about piezos and how they work and this explains basically everything you need to know.
Thank you, that's the aim of my videos. Not to be exhaustive but to give enough information to get started, and get a general knowledge to be able to create and research further if needed.
I couldn't get any useful sound out of the piezos that I bought, even with a mini amp with 9v battery so I got the premade ones off ebay (red and black). Supposedly these will work a lot better according to other videos. If you're having issues then try that or maybe leave me a reply and I'll let you know how it went.
Excellent content. Excellent script and pacing. I truly want to build the stuff I see in your videos. You're likely gonna wake up one day in the future, though, and wonder what the hell you were thinking with the septum hardware. But excellent content anyway.
You know what, I am absolutely bewildered how someone can leave such a nice and supportive comment only to do a complete 180 and become offensive and think that your opinion about my life choices, vis a vis my piercings, is in any way welcome. Stop focusing on other people's bodies, it's rude and offensive. I do wonder what the hell you were thinking in writing your comment, it's such an alien thing for me, to even fathom how someone can be so focused on other people like that. It does not sound healthy.
DO NOT be in the same room. or even the same BUILDING as ANYTHING at 123dbA if you even slightly value your hearing. The Decibel Scale is logarithmic, so 12dbA is twice as loud as 6dbA, and you can get hearing loss starting at 85dbA(A = adjusted for human freq range). At ~123dbA, you will get hearing loss in 35 seconds. Protect your hearing using appropriately rated hearing protection, and don't do anything loud indoors. (the decibel unit is more complicated than that, and i don't understand it fully at the time of writing this comment. do your own research)
Well duh, as I say, it's a Piezo siren. It's fine to be exposed to that for a brief moment, as I am. The reason it's that loud is so burglars don't stay around, because it is physically painful. Your hearing won't be damaged in the 5ish seconds it was on. Also, it seems like you're misunderstanding what logarithmic means. 12db is NOT twice as loud as 6db, as you write, rather about 12 times louder. A change from 10db to 20db is ten times louder.
I made one on bare copper board, in electronics class a few years ago, and it had a lovely distorted sound. I only had a ukulele to try it on, and black metal ukulele is a fantastic combination. Sadly, when I made a proper perf board version, the distortion went away, and now it sounds clean and smooth. What a shame, that noisy mishap was better then expected.
I did this years ago to some guitars just with super glue and the audio jack, the quality of the sound wasn't the best but it was still a nice project and gave me an "electroacustic guitar" for almost free.
I was so looking forward to you pressing the puck against the elephant :( Great video, thank you! Loved the little tune you played, go on producing music, I am listening forward to it!
I have what appears to be a two tone piezo disc that I salvaged from an old smoke alarm (don't worry, I was careful with the radioactive bit). I think its two tone since it has two separate crystal areas, both of which have wires going to them, plus a third to the metal disc. I only mention this because I didn't know there were such things and thought it was interesting.
Yeah, I’ve seen those before, it’s not a two tone piezo. It’s actually a self driving piezo. More information can be found about them here: makezine.com/2009/12/03/ask-make-three-legged-piezo/
The funny thing is, if you actually look at the audio levels the volume of the alarm isn't louder than the peaks during the rest of the video. Just because you imagine it's loud doesn't mean it is. I lowered the volume significantly from the original recording.
I'd really love to make one of those :D but I don't have any fancy recording devices. Would it work if I just connect it to a speaker that has "microphone in" port? Also can I use it as a PC microphone to record stuff?
The best answer I can give is: it depends. You're just going to have to try. You can definitely hook them up to an amp (or a speaker with a built in amp) for live performances for instance, but whether it will work as a PC input I would guess depends on your computer and its inputs.
I’ve seen that all of contact piezo mics are soldered to mono cables and mono jacks, but it looks here you did it with stereo, am I correct? If so, could I know why? I’ve been making own (both mono and stereo using single piezos) and to be honest still don’t know if there is benefit or if it useful at all. I would like to know your opinion. Loved the video, very inspiring.
So you just need to connect (solder) the wires of the piezo disc to a metal? Also, do you know how to make a recording device where I can tape the piezo on top of the recording device. I don't want the recorder to be so large.
Hiho, I wanted to build this but not exactly like you did it - I solderes the wires to my disc and cut an aux cable in half, now there are three wires coming from the aux but only two coming from the disc and I am unsure how to connect them. The important part ofc is, that my phone accepts the piezo disc as headphones, which it doesn't and this confues me a bit - no matter how I connect the three wires to the two wires
Likely you’re using a stereo cable, which has a wire for the left and the right channel, and one for ground. You could connect the left and right channel wires together to essentially make a mono cable out of it. You may have to use a multimeter to figure out which wire goes to which part of the plug though. For it to be recognized by your phone I cannot help you though. That is dependent on your phone.
Have you experimented with different types of surfaces any to see what materials communicate sound more clearly? Plastic, metal, wood, tile, etc...? Also what materials dampen signal better? Rubber, foam, cork, etc...?
Haha! I can pop it on command, totally painless, without any discomfort. Though, for some reason it tends to happen only naturally otherwise when I'm chewing gum, so I tend to avoid it.
The answer to can one build a pcb for its musical properties is yes.. the lenght and thickness will change its harmonics so you can fine tune a pcb if you wish.
Nice! I think, i "must" built this ;-) But, i think allso it is maybee better to connect the twoo Piezo Disks seperatly with the Left and Right Channel.
@@Schwertmaid nope, it would just be the same signal, but at slightly different frequencies as the different sized piezos have slightly different ranges. There really wouldn't be much point.
The friend could have connected to this pickup a reverb pedal, of those used in guitars, of the type "Pitch Shifter Delay PS-3 Boss", it would make very cool effects!
Hi thank you very much indeed for this very interesting video. I wonder how much the material of the box will impact the sound. I would like to build a pickup to be used in an electric guitar ... i think that finding the oprimal placement of these piezo disks will take a lot of time A lot of trials. Regards, gino
The thing is, the alarm isn’t higher than the rest of the video, it’s severely lowered in volume over the original video. It’s all psychological why it feels louder.
