Homemade Guitar Hero / Frets on Fire controller how to

Written by Stuyo

Thursday, 10 January 2008

 

Part 4 - The Body

I played a little and upgraded my modding place at home:)

Till now no money were spent. It seems it was high time to start doing so. While I was at a book store, I couldn’t help but notice the child guitars on display there. They cost a small fortune - 11.80 BGN (8$). But at the end I couldn’t help it and bought one:

I also needed some mounting hardware and for about 2 BGN (1.3$) I got what was needed from the nearby hardware store. So the total spent was 14 BGN.

As a true modder, that I am :), the first thing to do was disassemble the guitar. Well, at first I played it for the last time (or at least I tried):

That is a paper stencil, which will become plate to cover the hole and also will support the extra component, which I will add later on:

Here is the plate itself. I cut it from some plastic sheet I had laying around. It's 1.5mm thick, easily bendable and can be cut with scissors. I mounted it with some of the bolts I bought earlier:

These are the support panels for the string. I cut them from a scrap piece of green, transparent acrylic, 4mm:

These panels are mounted:

A big problem turned out to be the whammy bar. Another problem is that I couldn’t find how it’s called in Bulgarian :).

Finally I solved the problem. For switch I used an old reset button from a computer case. It is mounted to a panel. The other panel is mounted with the help a bolt and nut and when it moves it presses the button. I suppose it becomes more clear from the following pictures: