Baby's first contact mic.

My usual amusements are mostly fall and winter kinds of things. So what do bored ladies do in the summertime? Electronics projects, of course. For a while, at least, I'm going to be documenting my attempts at making interesting noises based on the projects in Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking.

So today's project: making a contact microphone out of a piezo disk. Considering that my soldering is pretty crappy and I have the steady hands of a woman three times my age, this was a little tricky.

Basically you stick the disk on one end of a piece of shielded cable and a jack on the other so you can plug it into an amp. Then you tape the hell out of everything in an attempt to keep your shitty soldering from shorting out and dip it in plastic paint.

Here's everything all soldered together before the taping and paint part:
















Dipped in the plastic goo and hanging up to dry:





















Look sharp, ambient hums.