Tilt No More: Overdrive Button for Rockband
16 02 09 - 23:54
The world has had guitar shaped videogame controllers for quite a while now. From the first Guitar Freaks game to the current hot/cold war of Guitar Hero and Rockband. The one thing the current crop of guitars all share is a dodgy way of activating your "super power" (Star Power in GH, Overdrive in RB) by tilting your guitar straight up. While commonplace, the mechanism is imprecise and doesn't always work when you need/want it to. So, here's a simple modification that converts the tilting mechanic into a straight forward button press. Join me, won't you?
The tilting mechanism in my 1st edition Rockband guitar is accomplished by an odd little circuit board between the strummer and the whammy bar. It's unusually that it has two signal wires (in mine, two white wires) and a single ground wire.
Removing it with a screwdriver and some wiresnips, you'll have this small rattling circuitboard. Now, all you have to do is drill out a button of your choice. I'm currently enamored with these chrome beauties I bought online a few months ago, they're visually perfect for a guitar. I chose between the strumbar and whammy bar, the original location for my button. My pink rests on it while I play. It's important to note that if you put it there, it will not be "easier" to use overdrive. It'll actually require some dexterity to strum with one finger and press with another. The button is designed to make activating overdrive more accurate. If you wanted to, you could install the button anywhere including on the neck fret where you could hit it with your thumb.
Now the slightly odd part. Discard the GROUND wire you just cut from the circuit board. Just tape it off to the side where it won't cause any trouble. The solder (or in the case of these buttons, screw) one of the two signal wires to one side of your button and the other wire to the other side. That's it!
Exactly what was happening in the circuit you removed is a bit of a mystery to me, honestly. At first I put both signal wires on one end of the button and the ground on the other end of the button. Pressing the button would actually change the guitar effect from Echo to Chorus!!!
You can easily extend this mod by putting your overdrive button outside of your guitar in the form of an effects pedal (which I'll be doing for fun, but I do kinda consider cheating the system since the tilt mechanism is easy, but in accurate - the overdrive button is accurate, but not easy - and the foot pedal will be both accurate and easy).
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