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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.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Order99 on June 29, 2011 at 5:51pm

These aren't Piezos-but that Dollar Tree mentioned earlier for the window alarms? They also sell headphones...two tiny speakers for a dollar. Still working on my first build(might finish this weekend I hope) and I aim to try the speaker route and see what happens...

Permalink Reply by rusty case on September 5, 2012 at 4:42pm

o99... how did the headphone speakers work out for you???

:-)

$ store had 0 door alarm buzzers available... I had only bought a couple, many months ago to use for scaring deer in my garden... they are hopelessly lost, now.

just found 6 of em at a yardsale... all wrapped up in a bundle of packing tape..lol.. a buck for all of em!

:-)

Permalink Reply by Frank Miller on July 25, 2011 at 4:15am

Just a reminder, this is prime yard sale time. Around here, I'm finding a lot of toys that make noise for 10 to 25 cents.

Permalink Reply by rusty case on August 27, 2012 at 4:27am

Tnx for suggesting the possibilities!

Permalink Reply by Order99 on September 7, 2012 at 4:56pm

The headphones didn't work out as well as i'd hoped Rusty-too tiny and too cheaply made, with cellophane heads, they weren't receptive enough. Now I did get a faint signal when I used it in my godawful-loud Piepan Dulcimer-banjo, but not enough to justify trying again. So far, i'm sticking with the simple Piezo and Mono jacks when I bother to electrify at all-most of my latest Tennis-racket specials are nearly as loud as a full-sized Classical (i'm betting it's the maple-veneer chamber) so i'm not electrifying unless it's for a client and they want the option...

Permalink Reply by Where's Uranus? on May 22, 2013 at 6:21am

Seems a lot of the modern musical cards aren't using piezos anymore they're using some kind of tiny flat dynamic speaker, usually in black plastic, stamped 16 ohms.

Howsoever, if you're prepared to wait around a couple of weeks, you can order a bag of 15 for $3 and change from these guys, they've always been reliable for me, but they're never very fast. Expect a month and you won't be dissappointed.

I too stocked up on the Dollar Tree alarms, before finding this.