AbstractDamping or absorbing effect in vibration control applications with piezo elements may be customized by an external impedance shunt branch connected to the plates of the piezo element. The negative capacitance present in the shunt significantly improves the damping and absorbing performance of such systems. The circuit is built up of an electronic gyrator realized by the operational amplifier, which is in reality not the ideal element. Therefore the performance of the proposed systems is limited, concerning the maximum voltages and currents at which the operational amplifiers can operate. In the paper, the finite gain of the operational amplifier, together with the loss impedances and the feedback gain factor is studied. The influence of the certain imperfections in the design of the electronic gyrator is based on 1DOF mechanical oscillator, with a piezo stack. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)