Three easy-pickups for E&E / my first DIY guide

I’ve got my first order!

Someone asked about three pickups, two for drums and one for violin. So I was forced to finish something, for once.
This is the most simple piezo pickup solution, it has it’s limits but works pretty good, and it makes an easy and rather un-expensive microphone.

This is how it goes:

Materials I used for one EZ-pickup:
– A cable, here with a RCA connector
– a piezoelectric transducer
– Dupont connectors, male and female
– heat shrink tubes
– hot glue

Tools:
– a soldering iron (and sponge, holder, tin!)
– a saw (to cut the female duponts)
– double-sided tape
– a good cutter
– a lighter: to shrink the tubes
– a saw

Cut one connector away
Free the wires
Saw the female duponts
Solder the cable to the female duponts (+ hot glue and heat shrink tube)
Solder the discs to the male duponts (+ hot glue and heat shrink tube)
Plug piezo into cable
Test
Fix the dupont connection with some heat shrink tube around it.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Notes:

RCA connector: other connectors also work, RCA cables are abundant you can probably get one from a drawer, and you will just need a simple adaptor to 6.35 jack and you can plug it into any mixer (as you can see on the first picture for the drums solid pick-ups pair)
For the multi-purpose/violin pickup I chose a cable with already a male jack.
Piezoelectric transducer: I have different sizes, now I chose for the biggest and solid 35mm one for the drums, and a 20mm thiner one for the multi-purpose/violin pickup.
Dupont connectors, male and female. I find it handy to be able to easily replace a piezo from its cable. We can do so by removing (cut out) the outer heat shrink tube, unplug, and replace the piezo disc, put new heat shrink. I forgot to take a picture at this stage of the making. Next time!
Hot glue: to fix, solidify around the soldering spots. with some heat shrink around it, it creates a really solid connection. I also always use it to fix the wires onto the piezo discs.

Thanks for reading, still a little in construction here, I appreciate comments, welcome questions and even encouragement!