The construction of a rotatable transducer for generating and detecting pulses of plane‐polarized 10 MHz ultrasound is described. The usefulness of the transducer is demonstrated in attenuation measurements made along various symmetry directions on a single crystal, and in acoustical birefringence measurements made on anisotropic solids, as well as elastically deformed structural alloys. The calibration of the polarization of the transducer, and its utilization to determine the directions of principal axes of the shear waves, are also reported.