This study presents a new design of sensor tool to record substrate-borne vibrations produced by insects. We applied a piezo element acting as a contact microphone connected to a digital recorder to detect the signals emitted by insects. A suitable 3D printed microphone box with a mechanism of connection to the substrate or to soft tweezers holding the insect is created. We found that the recordings of the low-frequency signals (up to 20 кHz) were sufficiently good for analysis and, at the same time, a much faster and easier method than the common ones of detecting micro-vibrations using a piezoelectric sensor and, importantly, is incomparably cheaper than using a laser vibrometer. This setup is suitable for the detection and structural description of signals emitted by insects and other arthropods. Oscillograms, spectrograms and audio files of the recorded signals of selected ants (