How to make your own piezoelectric speaker

Piezoelectric speakers are found all around you, from musical greeting cards to the tweeters in your car stereo setup. Making your own piezo speakers is actually very easy, as [Steven] shows us after replacing the speaker in a clock radio.

Piezo speakers require a small crystal with piezoelectric properties, so this build is the perfect followup to [Steven]‘s tutorial for making Rochelle salt crystals. After attaching two strips of aluminum foil to his Rochelle salt crystal, [Steven] took the wires that previously went to the clock radio speaker, connected them to the crystal, and turned on the radio. When attached to a tin can, the newly created piezo speaker created a little bit of sound, but the results weren’t very impressive.

To boost the sound output of his homemade speaker, [Steven] needed to increase the voltage across his piezo speaker. At first he tried a doorbell transformer with somewhat better results, but much more sound was produced when he used a transformer taken from a microwave oven.

After experimenting with his microwave transformer and Rochelle salt, [Steven] moved on to piezo elements found in BBQ and cigarette lighters. These homemade speakers were much clearer than the chunk of Rochelle salt he was using previously, and surprisingly produced about the same audio quality as a commercially made piezo speaker [Steven] picked up at Radio Shack.

You can check out the build video for [Steven]‘s crystal speaker after the break.

Filed under: musical hacks