One of the most challenging issues facing shallow seismic survey is how to generate large amplitude of high frequency signal with small seismic sources. We tested the performance of the most commonly used shallow seismic source, hammer, with four plates: PE, nylon, aluminum, and steel plates. We compared their signal powers in terms of impulsive forces, accelerations, and ground vibration velocities caused by hammer impacts. According to a previous work, hammer blowing to an aluminum plate would generate the largest amplitude among four combinations. However, it was found in this experimental research that aluminum plate delivers seismic wave energy to the ground less than that generated with steel or PE plate. Even though the amplitude is relatively small, plastic plates could provide seismic pulses of 180 ~ 200 Hz in the bandwidth, and it seems to be very hard to generate seismic energy over the frequency of 250 Hz.