I love using piezo contact mics - they're small and cheap, and can do a whole bunch of different things.
Unfortunately, they can sound pretty rubbish. In particular, they don't like long cables - all of the bass disappears, and they get quite "muddy".
I came across [http://www.zachpoff.com/ Zach Poff]'s writeup of Alex Rice's piezo preamp [http://www.zachpoff.com/diy-resources/alex-rice-piezo-preamplifier/ here], which is a great solution - phantom powered, low noise, pretty simple and a little bit of gain.
With a lot of help from [http://www.mattvenn.net/ Matt Venn], I've redesigned the board layout with a view to putting it inside bottle-cap hydrophones: as small as possible, and approaching circular.
The current version is always on GitHub: https://github.com/mo-seph/PiezoPreamp
(Creative Commons, as per the originally shared versions)
I've had a batch of 100 boards made - if you want to buy one, email me. They'll be unpopulated (i.e. you have to solder components on it), but cheap (£1-2, probably). If there's enough interest, I'll put together some kits with components in. A Farnell parts list is attached.
== Project Blog ==
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