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I'm interested in making something small that will allow me to amplify the sound of my heart. The most basic idea consisted of a contact mic attached to a female 1/4" jack/battery powered speaker. I wanted to consult with you geniuses before I wasted my time though.

Would a contact mic attached to my shaven chest simply pick up the sound of clothes rustling? Any ideas as to how I could more efficiently accomplish this most important of projects?

Thanks.

ultrasound machine?

Little Atlas Heavyweight wrote:ultrasound machine?

Crowley and Tripp (ribbon mic guys) used to be involved with stuff like this.
Why not fire them an email.

Go to Radio Shack and your local pharmacy. Buy a $20 mini-electret watch-battery powered lavalier mic and a cheap stethoscope. Leave a long enough length of sound-transmission tube on the stethoscope to tape to your body, mount the electret in the tube (should stretch to fit). Shave a spot over your heart and tape the stethoscope diaphragm there.

I was wondering this same thing last week and came up with the above recipe. No chance it won't work well, as long as you can minimize rustling noise. Those electret's have a pretty big bottom too.

this would be a funny way to find your heart keeps lousy time. i.e.-a murmur.

burndaddy wrote:Go to Radio Shack and your local pharmacy. Buy a $20 mini-electret watch-battery powered lavalier mic and a cheap stethoscope. Leave a long enough length of sound-transmission tube on the stethoscope to tape to your body, mount the electret in the tube (should stretch to fit). Shave a spot over your heart and tape the stethoscope diaphragm there.

I was wondering this same thing last week and came up with the above recipe. No chance it won't work well, as long as you can minimize rustling noise. Those electret's have a pretty big bottom too.

I have done this exact thing for a noise project I'm involved in at the moment...The tube didn;t stretch over the mic, but the bit of the stethoscope head which went into the tube fitted exactly into the whole on the end of the mic...The problem I found in a live setting was I couldn't ampilfy the signal enough to be able to hear the heartbeat without getting just squealing feedback...I think that is more to do with my setup in this project though, which involves sitting very close to the speaker of my amp...

Back in the day when I was running a lot more than I do today, I used to run with a heart rate monitor.
One day I came home from a run still wearing the transmitter belt around my chest a played a bit on my electric guitar. The guitar pickups were picking up my heart frequency and played them back through the amp.
It's more like a ticking sound than an actual heart beat but it works really well.
I can imagine that you could use this signal to trigger a heart beat sound.

get yourself a pacemaker with a line out.

I would find it more exciting for you to get a pacemaker with a midi in.

talk to alan parsons. he did that back in 72..