Friday, October 22, 2010

DIY eDrum Build: Part 3

Well, the piezos got here a few days ago, and yesterday I soldered my first piezo pickup assembly together!

^ The 1/4" jack that will plug into the drum module.
^ The piezo pickup element.

Then I tried it out and it works! :-D It picks up drum hits very well, and I can also pick up my acoustic guitar with it - a nice bonus! I may have to get a few more and make a dedicated guitar pickup with them :-)

~Mac

4 comments:

India Edith said...

Awesomesauce! Looking forward to pictures 8-)
~Indi

Unknown said...

Soooo.. Forgive my ignorance on this topic.. =P But with this setup, you could, like, walk into the studio with an accordian or a flute or something, and it would do studio-quality recording of whatever you played? Or would it need a mic or something..? Annd, I'm guessing there are different levels of quality too... Or am I totally off on what this whole thing is? XD haha, can't wait to see pics either ;)
~Estkimo (Esther) =oD

MacMeister said...

Well, a piezo is a contact microphone. It works by converting vibrations (that compress the piezo element) into electrical voltages. So if you attached it directly to a flute or accordion where it could pick up the vibrations, and you had it connected to a recording system, you could get a recording of that instrument, although it probably wouldn't be very high quality ;-) For high quality acoustic recordings I use my condenser mics; I was just thinking about making a pickup to record live with.

Hope that answers the questions! XD

Essie said...

Ah, Gothca ;) VERY cool... And I mean it. I just am not in to that arena enough to speak your language... Kinda like if I start talking about the race between Joe Miller and Lisa Murkowski, and Lisa's write-in campaign and... yeah XD
Thanks for the explanation.. maybe I'll get to see it for reals some day ;)