I have had one of these telephone pickup coils for a while, but had used it minimally until recently. I was inspired to mess around more with this wonderful piece of equipment after reading Jean-Eduard Miclot's blog post Electromagnetism and seeing Richard Devine at the Propellerhead Producers Conference last weekend where he talked briefly about the pickups. If you've never used one of these I suggest you grab one and stick it on every electric thing you can find. The telephone pickup coils are pretty cheap at MCM Electronics, or you can stop by Radioshack and grab one.
So, on to the sounds. I stuck this little monster on every electronic device I had in my immediate vicinity. The first recording is of my iPod. The pickup was stuck on the wheel/buttons as I scrolled through menus and skipped through a few songs. The interesting part about this recording is that under all the electronic sounds, you can hear the songs that are playing. I did not have headphones plugged in, so the pickup was grabbing the music straight from the harddrive.
IPod Transducer by Googe
The next recording is of my Nintendo DS starting up, loading a game (Final Fantasy IV), playing the game a bit, and saving. The pickup was placed right under the power switch.
DS Transducer by Googe
The third recording is of the laser on my optical mouse.
Optical Mouse Transducer by Googe
This last recording is of me turning on and off my Markbass Little Mark Tube 800 bass amp. The first part is with the pickup attached to the top above the input and then moved back to the fan. The second sound is with the pickup on top over the fan. The third sound starts out over the fan and is then moved over the power supply, which is right next to the fan. The last part is over the power supply. I love the dissonance of the last part and the high pitched whine that comes after.
Markbass Little Mark Tube Transducer by Googe
Recording Notes: Recorded with a telephone pickup coil into a Zoom H4n.
