#1 resource for Cigar Box Guitars, Free Plans, How-To, Parts & More!

Free recycled Piezo pickups

As many of you may already know. Piezos can be made into a simple and effective contact pickup. Did you also know many can be found cheaply or even free? Here are a few places I found piezo elements free because they were going for the trash:

Cards that play music

some talking stuffed animals

smoke detectors

games

I found 4 or 5 out of a broken rockband drumset

an old auto alarm system.

Hope this helps. Feel free to add to the list.

5 members like this

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jonathan on February 15, 2011 at 5:13pm

Okay so I found a birthday card that hand dogs barking happy birthday and it has a speaker that is attached to a circuit board with some watch batteries were will the Piezo be ?

Permalink Reply by Jonathan on February 15, 2011 at 5:40pm

basically how am I going to achieve using this as a pickup?

Permalink Reply by Steve Becker on February 16, 2011 at 6:11pm

Dollar tree has very cheap ones too. The window/door alarms. Only a buck, plus you get three button batteries.

Permalink Reply by MichaelS Country Boy Guitars on February 17, 2011 at 2:10am

Jonathan, The piezo in the card will be used as a speaker. It should be a small flat metal (brass usually) disc with a spot of ceramic like stuff in the middle, also flat. a wire should be attached to the metal and to the ceramic. This is the piezo and you wire this to a 1/4 inch jack and then plug into and amp and voila you have a pickup.

Permalink Reply by Jonathan on February 17, 2011 at 3:59am

THANK YOU so much Mike :-) so I will need to break it away from the plastic casing or can it still be used while still inside the casing ?

Permalink Reply by MichaelS Country Boy Guitars on February 17, 2011 at 6:12am

Take it out of the casing for best results.

Permalink Reply by Jonathan on February 17, 2011 at 8:09am

right on :-D and thank you :-)

Permalink Reply by Wade on February 19, 2011 at 3:56pm

Thanks Michael - ya beat me too it!

Permalink Reply by keith peterson on February 25, 2011 at 5:37am

I have found a lot of them in old phones, has to be the phones that are really heavy, piezo is the ringer between two metal plates, cant be a digital phone. Also window alarms at the dollar store for 99 cents. Happy Hunting. PS you can find these old phones at Goodwill, Salvation Army, ect...

Permalink Reply by Frank Miller on April 21, 2011 at 6:24pm

I find a lot of sources for piezos by searching through yard sales. A lot of times, noise-making toys, etc, are available for next to nothing (my kind of price). Some have small speakers, but these can be used as pickups, too, but you may want to build a pre-amp to up the signal.

Permalink Reply by econnofoot on April 21, 2011 at 6:29pm