Guitar Hero Controlor With Light Up Buttons!

Ok, so I know that you have probably seen the guitar hero light up buttons before. But this is different only because in the other ones the only way they showed how to do it was to make new buttons and frankly I am lazy. So I decided what the hell lets try just putting some LEDs in the original buttons. Another thing that is different about this "mod" is the LEDs are always on instead of only going on when the buttons are pushed. So now to get on with it. I will start out with what you will need,

Soldering Iron
Solder
Pliers
Wire Cutters
Wire (doesn't really matter the size but i would recommend small just because it is easier to fit in the guitar)
LEDs (I used 12 and white ones are the best)
File or Dremel (I used the dremel it saves time)
Electrical Tape
Small & Med Size Phillips Screw Driver

Step 1:

Take it apart. To do this flip it over and look for all the screw holes, they arnt hard to find!

So now thats done take a look and bask in the glory at how such a simple thing can make you waste so many hours of your life....awwww.....ok now back to business.

Step 2:

Now locate a power source. This one took me some time to do, the reason is that I used 2 different colored LEDs (Red and White) now both of these LEDs have different power ratings so after a bit of fiddling around I was able to find 2 power sources.
the first was for the red LEDs. ONLY USE THIS ONE IF YOU ARE USING RED LEDs OTHERWISE THE WITH ONES WILL NOT WORK! So anyway if you look at the "mainboard" of the controer, you will see the cable that connects it to the PS2. You will also see many colored wires there. The two that I used were the GREEN and RED ones. As far as which ones were positive and negative just test it out with the LED (I don't remember). So just solder a wire onto each of these and then tape it up. Now for the LEDs that most of you will probably be using the white ones. I found this power source by accident. It is in two different places, so to speak, one wire has to go to the orange wire that connects to the PS2 and the other goes to....well just take a look at the picture it is a little hard to explain so ya. But it works.

Step 3:

Hollow out the buttons. This part was a little hard to do. Well it was until i found my other bit for the Dremel. So there are two ways to do it, the first is to use a file a slowly file down the inside of the buttons, or two (I personally like this one) use a Dremel and go very fast. Heres a before and after shot of the buttons as you can see I took out the horizontal plastic parts so that the light would be more visitable.
BEFORE: AFTER:
Sorry about the picture of the after one that was the best one. But anyway so you can see what has to be taken out. You have to this to all of them. But a word of caution to those of you who want to use the Dremel you need to try to keep as much of the middle part with the two holes because that is the part the pushes the button down. So ya just keep that in mind when your doing that.

Step 3:

Measure out the length of wire and then solder up he LEDs. I'm not going to put a pic up of that because it is pretty self explanatory. What I did was put 2 LEDs in each button except for the blue one because it is very dark I put 4 of them in there but you can put as many as you want.

Step 4:


Try and cram everything in so you can put the guitar back together. Just try to make it look nice and neat use the electrical tape if need be but do the best you can to make the wire avoid the screw holes because if it covers it then you have a tough time putting the guitar back together




Step 5:

Have a ball testing it out. So ya thats it any questions/comments just post them. One little side note here I did not do this but i will when I do my next one is use hot glue to keep the LEDs in place and to light up the buttons better. It is all up to you on what should be done. I hoped you enjoyed my tutorial and that it goes well for you if you decide to try it out.