cheap and easy guitar pickups

Step 8 Last but not least

this little number is the guts of one of those old snooper coils that you used to be able to get at radio shack in the 70s . the idea was to attach this to the earpiece of your phone with a suction cup and you could record the conversation on an ordinary tape recorder . it wasn`t a mic that used sound waves it was a coil and magnet and picked up the signal from the wires and coils in the receiver.

Comments

[Mrvoxius]

Hey lenny, As you could see from my profile I'm a reasonably lo tech guy at this point but I'm learning. This is a very helpful project profile. I'd like to make something you could just kind of tape to whatever object and record it's vibrations (pots and pans, a dumpster, a door etc.) for use in creating neat percussion sounds.

[lennyb]

try using the one side of a headphone set. a buddy of mine used one as an internal pickup in a crappy acoustic guitar. just plug it into your mic input and see which side makes a sound when you scratch it . then cut of a save for later use the other phone. tape it in place and your good to go.

[nah]

Pickups like the ones described here are based around magnetic fields, so they probably aren't going to get you want you want in terms of "stick it on anything and work". I think a piezo element is more along the lines of what you're looking for. I'm afraid I have little more info on them, but they are cheap enough (check http://www.allelectronics.com) so if you decided to pick a few up to screw around with it wouldn't set you back too much. Hopefully that will get you started in the right direction, sorry I don't have more.

[Mrvoxius]

Thanks for your help and the link. We actually just studied piezos and I'm mildly familiar with the term from being a musician for so long. Peace.
http://www.myspace.com/4mmultiplemusic