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Permalink Reply by Kevin Morgan on October 13, 2009 at 9:21am

I like the leather idea as I have a bunch of it and it seems to work great.

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Permalink Reply by Dan Sleep on October 13, 2009 at 9:55am

I have been curious. And this is for all those electronics geeks we have here.

Is there a way to electronically measure the output from a piezo, first unmodified, then modified to see how much damping is occurring when we insulate the piezo with various methods?

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Permalink Reply by Mark C on October 14, 2009 at 1:20am

Hi Iggy, you don't actually say if these products work well. Are there any drawbacks you've noticed, e.g. loss of volume? Be interested to hear some further comments. And thanks for sharing the information, I haven't heard of either product before.

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Permalink Reply by Dan Sleep on October 14, 2009 at 1:34am

There will be some loss of volume, but not that much. I have been using the Plasti-Dip for a while and it seems to work pretty well and you can definitely notice the difference between a piezo with and without.

I coat the piezo with the plastic stuff, putting it on pretty liberally, then glue it to the box lid using a fairly thick coating of kitchen and bath caulk.

They are still pretty sensitive, but not nearly as bad.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Doug on October 14, 2009 at 3:12am

This all really confuses me. We go to all the trouble to get the piezo out of the little plastic container it comes in and than we insulated it again. Huh?

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Permalink Reply by Dan Sleep on October 14, 2009 at 4:45am

The ones I get don't come in the little plastic container. I think the plastic makes them more tinny. This way, you are insulating it with something soft that absorbs the "excess" vibrations.

I actually built my first one and left the piezo in the plastic thing, but I didn't like the way it sounded.


Paul Doug said:

This all really confuses me. We go to all the trouble to get the piezo out of the little plastic container it comes in and than we insulated it again. Huh?

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Permalink Reply by Mark Werner on October 14, 2009 at 5:09am

The first couple of piezos I used were very "microphonic", that is, they picked up even slight sounds from anything touching the box. Very sensitive.
I started using silicone seal to mount mine, and it seems to reduce this sensitivity a great deal while still providing good sound.

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