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Hey I'm having one of my classic 1 in the morning idea moments and want to try and build a lo-fi mic kinda like those copper mics that inspired Devi to prototype an idea. I've seen a few things using using old telephones speakers wired to a 1/4 jack but I was also looking at radio shack piezo elements as a contact mic. But all the examples of contact mics are people in noise projects banging things together with a contact mic on it or it attached to an acoustic. Would I be able to use the piezo wired to a jack and then built into something as a mic or would that only be useful for actually attaching to something.I dont wanna spend my afternoon driving around to different thrift stores trying to find shitty old phones to tear apart if I can just run to radio shack for a few things.

Not that this answers your question directly, but I've definitely used headphones as (kinda awful) mic's in a pinch.

Ive seen that a few times too. Im looking more to have it in a mic like enclosure of sorts I guess its more of the project and possibility to bring it to practice and see what can be done with it.I'm not really in a rush I just get these ideas late at night.But I'm def going to look around for shitty or broken headphones in my house i didnt even think about that. If your into black metal at all I watched the documentary "Until the Light Takes Us" and Varg from Burnzum talks about how he wanted those cds to sound as gritty as it should so he recorded all the vocals with a headphones and a the guitars on the shittiest little marshall practice amp he could get.

I need to see that. Looks great! And I love recording techniques like that. One of my fave rock n rollers, this guy Mick Collins, always used to play shows out of a small little solid state Peavey, and I was initially kinda like, "that amp is a POS", but then I realized that it had a pretty great tone all cranked up.

Headphone speakers inside an open-ended plastic box would give you an interesting tone I bet. And stereo to boot!