Guitar Hero Guitars

Actually guitars for Frets-on-Fire, but I used this title because I thought people would be more familiar with the former.

I had the chance to play the Guitar Hero game with some friends and I loved the game, but I absolutely hated the controllers. Despite being expensive to buy they are very cheaply made, the buttons are absolutely horrific, you can feel there's just a spring behind them, nothing to tell you when they made contact or not (I don't know if that applies to all controllers or just the ones I had the chance to play with). So I decided to make my own and this is the result.

A short intro on how this was achieved:

DISCLAIMER: If you want to try this do it at your own risk. I am not responsible if you hurt/kill yourself while attempting this.

• buy materials
  • large plank of solid wood, about 2cm thick
  • USB game controller
  • nice thin wires
  • buttons: 7 Miniature snap-action switches
  • a couple of screws and small metal pieces that will allow the strum bar to rotate
• get the contour of the guitar on the wooden plank
  • The way I did this was to grab an image of a guitar from the Internet and project it on the plank of wood (with a projector of course), then I drew the lines with a marker over the projection
• cut the wood, for example using a Jigsaw
• drill the inner parts of the wood, and the holes for the buttons (switches)
• fit the switches in the holes
• connect the wires to the switches and lay the wires on the back of the guitar
• open up the USB game controllers
• figure out where the contacts of the buttons of the normal controller go and connect the wires from the switches in the place of the buttons, in my case it helped that the controller had 2 PCBs inside, one with the buttons and one mostly with electronics
• figure out how to place the strum bar so that it can move and when it moves it pushes on 2 of the switches (up and down)
• reuse controller plastic top of the buttons, I also reused the part around the button that kept the button in place. That did not work well.
• put a sticker on the back side of the guitar, covering the wires and keeping them in place

What works: