Advancements in the structural health monitoring (SHM) technology of composite materials are of paramount importance for early detection of critical damage. In this work, direct-write transducers (DWTs) were designed for the excitation and reception of selective ultrasonic guided waves and fabricated by spraying 25- [Formula: see text]-thick piezoelectric poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-trifluoroethylene) [P(VDF-TRFE)] coating with a comb-shaped electrode on carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) plates. The characteristics and performance of the ultrasonic DWTs were benchmarked with the state-of-the-art devices, discrete lead zirconate titanate (PZT) ceramic transducers surface-mounted on the same CFRP plates. The DWTs exhibited improved Lamb wave mode excitation (A0 or S0 mode) relative to the discrete PZT transducers. Moreover, high signal-to-noise ratio was obtained by effectively canceling other modes and enhancing the directivity with the periodic comb-shaped electrode design of the DWTs, despite the smaller signal amplitudes. The enhanced directivity overcompensates for lower amplitude attenuation, making DWT a good candidate for locally monitoring critical stress hot spot regions in the CFRP structure prone to early damage initiation. It is shown that pairing a DWT sensor with a discrete PZT actuator could further achieve balanced performance in both wave mode selection and signal amplitudes, making this combination really attractive for ultrasonic SHM.