Accusonic

maltingsaudio

https://fb.watch/aLxuTlw0Ka/

BillDL

It was called the C-Ducer and used the same piezo pressure technology as traffic sensing strips across the road.

In 1980 I had already used some of the round piezo-ceramic discs used as sounders as contact "mics" inside acoustic drums (and through an old Moog), on a foot stomp thingy, and stuck up onto the underside of acoustic guitar tops.  The idea wasn't new, given that companies like Barcus Berry, Schaller, etc already had stick-on transducers for various stringed instruments.  The discs were very light, thin and cheap from Tandy and later Maplin, and were later commonly used as the sounders inside musical greetings cards.  Soldering the wires to the ceramic material without cracking it off was difficult, but you could then get prewired ones and a blob of Araldite epoxy across where they connected held the wires firmly in place.  They captured enough vibration to be entirely passive into an amp, but needed EQ to dull the response down a bit.  The different diameter ones did create different tones due to the greater or lesser area sensing the vibrations and also the thickness of the brass disc made a difference.  I still have two acoustic guitars with these discs in them and they work well through an external EQ pedal into an acoustic or normal amp.

It is amazing to look back at the Tomorrows World episodes and see some of the new technolgies that came to fruition, but also the ones that looked promising but never saw further development.  Some things were just too far ahead of how most people thought back then.