Home -> Guitar Zero Xbox 360 -> Installation

Note: details on the differences for installing in a GH World Tour guitar are here.

You’ll need

• soldering iron
• solder
• Guitar Zero PCB with wires and LED
• Xplorer Guitar Hero controller
• T10 star screw driver or philips screw driver (depending on your guitar)
• wire cutter / stripper
• electrical tape
• breathing mask or fume remover (soldering can emit some nasty fumes)
• eye protection
• can-do attitude.

Optional but recommended

• precision needle-nose pliers
• A drill
• a multi-meter
• solder wick or solder-sucker
• diagonal cutter pliers for cutting the ends of leads

Completely optional

• third hand
• hot glue gun

Some notes on soldering:

• Don’t solder if you’re pregnant or might become pregnant.
• If you use non-lead solder, this will be MUCH harder. I usually use 60/40 tin/lead solder, it’s really easy to work with. But not safe to eat, if children eat it it will make them permanently retarded, which is why tin/lead solder is hard to find these days. But you should know that this project might take as much as twice as long if you use non-lead solder, especially if you’re just beginning to learn to solder. (non lead solder requires significantly more heat and cools quicker, that’s why it’s so hard to work with, and a lot easier to damage components)
• There are a lot of how-to guides out there, so I’ll leave it up to you to learn if you’ve never soldered before. I would call this a beginner-to-intermediate soldering project. The only thing that makes it a little difficult is that the wires tend to “not want to stay still”
• There is a setting on most multimeters, I call it “beep mode” – it beeps if the leads are electrically connected. So if you touch the leads to two points on a circuit board (anything labeled GND on the Guitar Zero PCB for example) and you hear a beep, you know those two points are somehow connected. You can use this to make sure that points that should be connected ARE connected and points that should not be connected ARE NOT connected. I recommend using this mode extensively if you’re a beginner solderer. Before you plug this controller in to your Xbox for example, make sure Vcc and ground don’t beep when you touch the leads to them.

Step	Images	Description
1		If you’re hacking a brand new controller, check that the guitar controller actually works.I also recommend, if it is at all possible, that before you get to work you fire up Guitar Hero and or Rock band and enter practice mode for some random very long song, and select slowest speed, then pause the game when the song starts and disconnect the controller This way you can easily reconnect the controller and test that all the buttons are working correctly once you’ve done all the soldering, etc. It’s a lot harder to test a controller by navigating menus.
1.5		Print out the image of the PCB shown here. It’s useful to have it nearby because some of the labels might be obscured by wires as we progress.
2		Open the controller. You’ll need either a T10 star screw driver or a regular philips. T10 screw drivers can be found in just about any hardware store, though you should note that the fat “interchangeable” bits usually don’t have a skinny enough neck to fit into the guitar. In the picture at left you can see a skinny interchangeable star screw driver I bought for $6 at Home Depot.
2.5		There’s a possibility that you have one of the earliest guitars, which used a different PCB for the buttons. So we’ll have to identify which PCB type you have, as this will affect the wiring a little.Open the neck of the guitar and look at the PCB behind the buttons. If it says RSF-3020-2-0, then you’re in the clear, you have the normal style. If it says 95055-KEY R1.3, then you have the old style. If neither, unscrew the button PCB and compare it to the two pictures at right. If it matches the TOP one, you have the new style, if it matches the BOTTOM one you have the old style. If it doesn’t match either, e-mail me. If you have the old style PCB, you just need to run the wires into the Guitar Zero PCB holes like this: Wire 1 -> Hole 1 Wire 2 -> Hole 2 Wire 3 -> Hole 4 Wire 4 -> Hole 5 Wire 5 -> Hole 6 Wire 6 -> Hole 3 Wire 7 -> Hole 7 Wire 8 -> Hole 8 This applies to both the input and output wires. If you have the new style PCB, you just need to run the wires into the Guitar Zero PCB holes like this: Wire 1 -> Hole 1 Wire 2 -> Hole 3 Wire 3 -> Hole 2 Wire 4 -> Hole 4 Wire 5 -> Hole 5 Wire 6 -> Hole 6 Wire 7 -> Hole 7 Wire 8 -> Hole 8 This applies to both the input and output wires. If you happen to be modding a Guitar Hero World Tour guitar or a Les Paul, the wire numbers directly correspond to the holes.
3		You should be able to see the numbers 1 and 8 on the controller’s main circuit board, or on the fret PCB. With a Sharpe or marker, draw a “>” on the ribbon cable with the wide end at wire #8 and the narrow end on wire #1. Do this up and down the cable on both sides. This will make life a lot easier when we’re connecting the new circuit board.
4		Note the short ribbon cable running from the strum circuit board to the controller’s main circuit board. It has 3 wires, one that is connected to up strum, one to down strum, and one that is connected to both. I’ll refer to these respectively as UP, DOWN, and GPIO (general purpose IO), these are labeled as such on the underside of the controller’s circuit board. On most controller’s you can only see the numbers 1 and 3 on top. Both labels are on the Guitar Zero circuit board, and should correspond perfectly when it’s time to connect them, but either way you should be able to figure out which wires are which from looking at the strum circuit board.You may find it helpful to mark the GPIO wire by coloring it as shown in the picture. Desolder this cable from the strum PCB. You can also just cut it and strip the end, but I’ve found it’s easier to just desolder it and that gives us an easy place to connect the strum-in wires for our mod.
5		Place the Guitar Zero PCB in the guitar, at approximately it’s final position. (see picture)Cut the fret buttons wire right over the middle of the Guitar Zero PCB.
6		Drill a hole for the LED, approximately lined up with the LED postion on the PCB. A 1/8″ drill bit should work perfect for the 3mm LED.
7		Spread the fret button cable wires and strip the ends and solder them to the Guitar Zero PCB. Make sure you connect the wires from the cable coming from the neck to “fret-in” and the wires going to the controller’s PCB to “fret-out”. This part might take a little while, here are a few tips to make it a little eaiser: It’s usually easier to solder the wires one at a time (instead of trying to get them all into position and then start soldering) It helps if you bend the end of the wire once it’s through the hole to hold it in place. Be careful that those wire ends don’t touch other holes or components on the board. Snip off excess wire once you’ve done the soldering It’s hard to use exactly the right amount of solder, but that’s what you’re trying to do here. Too little and the wires will work themselves loose, too much and the solder will jump to the next connection, in general go with more rather than less. If you have some solder wick, that can be an easy way to clean up excess solder You can run the wires through the PCB whichever way you find easiest to solder – generally I find it easiest to run them through the top and solder them on the bottom. One final note: wires 1, 2, and 4 on the fret-in side are all connected internally to ground, in case you test those connections.
8		Now for the power wires. First strip and “pre-tin” one end of the red and black wires: Form the end of into a very tight hook and melt some solder onto this hook.Now refer to the picture at left and identify Vcc and GND on the Guitar’s internal PCB. Connect the pre-tinned end of the red wire to Vcc on the internal PCB, and the pre-tinned end of the black wire to GND on the guitar’s internal PCB. To do this, hold the tip of the wire down on the appropriate pin and melt the solder with your soldering iron until it attaches itself to the pin. Remove the soldering iron but continue to hold the wire in place until the solder cools and the wire is held firmly. It’s a good idea to test with your multimeter that you haven’t accidentally shorted any of the pins together. Leave the other ends of these two wires unconnected for now.
9		Connect wires to the strum PCB. You can use the pre-tinning process you just used to connect to Vcc and GND, or you can put the ends of the wires through the holes and solder them in place. I’ve demonstrated both options in the picture at left.Leave the other ends of these wires unconnected for now.
10		Solder the Plect-out cable to the Guitar Zero PCB. As mentioned earlier, the 1 and 3 labels on the Guitars internal PCB should correspond to the lables on the Guitar Zero PCB.Solder the red wire to Vcc on the Guitar Zero PCB and the black wire to GND. Solder the Plect-in wires to their appropriate inputs on the Guitar Zero PCB. Refer to your printout of the Guitar Zero PCB as needed.
11		Solder the LED to the Guitar Zero PCB. The first image at left labels the LED colors, and these correspond to the labels on the Guitar Zero PCB.In general, the LED’s leads can be a lot shorter than you might initially guess. Bend the ends of the leads to hold the LED in position while soldering, and snip the ends once soldering is complete. Put the Guitar Zero PCB in its final position and bend the LED leads with some pliers so that it pokes into the hole you drilled earlier
12		Test it! First of all the Xbox ring on the guitar should light up when you turn on the xbox. The LED should blink yellow 3 times when you first plug it in (whether the xbox is on or not). Try pressing all the buttons and strumming up and down, make sure it all works. If not go to the trouble shooting section.
13		Tape everything down. You don’t want rattling wires while you’re playing, and you don’t want any of your soldered connections to come loose. With electrical tape, tape all wires in place, and tape the Guitar Zero PCB into place as firmly as possible. Hot glue is also a good option for holding the PCB in place.
14		Close the guitar, screw it shut, and have fun.

Troubleshooting

First of all if you’re having a problem do a quick check of your solder joints and make sure they all look solid. This solves 90% of problems.

The Guitar Zero mod starts out in “troubleshoot mode” – every time you press a button or strum, the LED will light up. You can use this to quickly verify that all of the buttons are working on the fret-in side. This mode is disabled the first time you finish playback of a song.

If you’re having a problem with buttons – one of them doesn’t register, or when you press red or yellow, red AND yellow are indicated – Look at the PCB image from step 2, and note the color labels by each wire on the left and right. If you have the red and yellow problem just described, it probably means that wires 7 and 6 are shorted together, either on fret-in or fret-out. If the Green button works, but blue doesn’t, that probably means that wire #2 isn’t firmly connected – either on fret-in or fret-out. Whatever color you’re having trouble with can be traced to at least one of 2 wires associated with that color on fret-in or fret-out.

problem	things to check
Xbox “ring” on guitar doesn’t turn on	This usually means Vcc and ground are connected and the XBox has disconnected the controller to prevent electrical problems
When I press yellow, both yellow and orange light up. (or some other variation on this)	This means two of your wires are shorted together, probably on input.
the red button is always pressed down OR yellow is always pressed down OR something similar	Red probably means that wire 2 is shorted to wire 1 on output, yellow means that wires 4 and 5 are probably shorted on output. The image at right shows which wires correspond to which fret buttons.
when I press [button] nothing happens	The wire for that button or strum input is probably loose, check your solder joint. If you jiggle the wire a little and the solder joint moves, that means it’s lose and you should melt the solder again, and maybe add a bit more.