Solderless piezo leads
Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2015 4:06 pmHi all,
Here's a way to attach leads to piezos that come without any, or to ones where they have broken off, with no soldering or hot glue - and I'm willing to bet that this method should produce far more long-lasting results than piezos with soldered leads and hot glue on them. When piezos fail, 99% of the time it's because the leads break off at the solder points or the ceramic part cracks and detaches because of the stress caused by the leads on the solder points. You can apply hot glue, but that can be messy and isn't fail-proof either. Besides, if your piezos don't have leads or they have broken off, some find it tricky to solder them back on. This method requires no skills at all and the resulting piezo should last a very long time unless you use sledgehammers instead of drumsticks.
All you need are the piezos (duh), adhesive copper tape, some sheathed cable (for the leads) and duct tape or similar. What's important is that the adhesive side of the copper tape must be conductive, otherwise it won't work. I bought 30m sent from China for less than 2 euros on ebay, so I'm guessing that most copper tape will meet this requirement. So here is how I do it:
First, stick a tiny bit of tape on the edge of the piezo to isolate the copper tape coming from the ceramic part of the piezo from the brass part:
Next, stick a couple of strips of copper to the ceramic and brass parts of the piezo. I left the paper backing on where it's not stuck on the piezo, and place it on a strip of duct tape, sticky side up:
Attach your leads by stripping the ends and sandwiching them on the copper with some more copper tape:
Now, just cover this side with duct tape, trim to taste and you're done:
My snare has had a piezo put together like this one for several weeks and I can't notice any difference at all to a piezo with regular leads and I doubt the duct tape has any influence on its mechanical properties - less than what solder and blobs of hot glue would I should think.
Here's a way to attach leads to piezos that come without any, or to ones where they have broken off, with no soldering or hot glue - and I'm willing to bet that this method should produce far more long-lasting results than piezos with soldered leads and hot glue on them. When piezos fail, 99% of the time it's because the leads break off at the solder points or the ceramic part cracks and detaches because of the stress caused by the leads on the solder points. You can apply hot glue, but that can be messy and isn't fail-proof either. Besides, if your piezos don't have leads or they have broken off, some find it tricky to solder them back on. This method requires no skills at all and the resulting piezo should last a very long time unless you use sledgehammers instead of drumsticks.
All you need are the piezos (duh), adhesive copper tape, some sheathed cable (for the leads) and duct tape or similar. What's important is that the adhesive side of the copper tape must be conductive, otherwise it won't work. I bought 30m sent from China for less than 2 euros on ebay, so I'm guessing that most copper tape will meet this requirement. So here is how I do it:
First, stick a tiny bit of tape on the edge of the piezo to isolate the copper tape coming from the ceramic part of the piezo from the brass part:
Next, stick a couple of strips of copper to the ceramic and brass parts of the piezo. I left the paper backing on where it's not stuck on the piezo, and place it on a strip of duct tape, sticky side up:
Attach your leads by stripping the ends and sandwiching them on the copper with some more copper tape:
Now, just cover this side with duct tape, trim to taste and you're done:
My snare has had a piezo put together like this one for several weeks and I can't notice any difference at all to a piezo with regular leads and I doubt the duct tape has any influence on its mechanical properties - less than what solder and blobs of hot glue would I should think.