Geek level up! DING!
As mentioned here a couple of posts ago, I am not currently in possesion of my Guitar Hero disk. This lead to crazy withdrawl until last Monday when I secured a copy of the demo for Guitar Hero 2. This demo is fantastic. Only four songs, but just what I needed to keep the love going until the 7th when the game gets its full release. Unfortunately, though the game will come with a new guitar, the demo required me to use my old one. This guitar had been on its last legs for a while now and finally died around Wednesday during a particularly heated runthrough of Rush's YYZ. Cue withdrawl symptoms. Being the cautious type, I'm not one to open up technology and look at the inside when I could void the warranty. Being the nerdy type, something breaking is seen as a perfect excuse to pry the bugger open and see how it works. These two aspects of my personality were in direct conflict with each other until around 10:30 tonight. I decided, fuck it. In two weeks, I'll have a new guitar anyway. Plus, there's a chance that I could figure out what's wrong and fix it up thus enabling me to play some more of the demo TONIGHT. Well, that's a temptation that I just couldn't resist. So out came the screwdriver, wirestrippers, electrical tape, soldering iron, and various other things that I like to have around when I'm fucking around with unfamiliar wiring. Busted that motherfucker open and was quite surprised by how simple it really is. The strum bar simply presses a button on a circuit board when it's pressed up or down, triggering the strum response. Pretty slick there. The whammy bar is just attatched to a spring and a sensor for how far it's moved. The tilt sensor? Just a couple of weights that slide around in a tube and relay back to the main board under the strum bar. I don't know what I was expecting, but surely a guitar has to have more than that to it? Right? Hm... guess not.

Happily, upon opening the thing up, I immediately spotted the problem. One of the wires relaying the main board back to the playstation had snapped. 20 minutes of work later (I have a shitty soldering iron that takes a while to heat up...) and the thing now works just as well as when I got it. I even fixed the squeak in the strum bar. My guitar is back on top, baby! Fuckin' right!

Of course, now I know how it works. Now I have seen the parts. Now I could, dare I say it, customize the fuck out of the body and keep the guitar working just as well as ever. That's right, folks. Peter's considering a casemod for his guitar. Naturally, I don't want to fuck around too much until I have backup. I'll wait until I get the other guitar with GH2. Still, then I'll have two guitars. One with an already voided warranty. Glee! Now taking suggestions on what my guitar should become. It needs to be something simple, as I've never been struck with the urge to casemod before and I want to tackle something that I can manage in my unpracticed state. Also, something not too expensive to make. I'm a student here, people. Funds are tight. Still, if anyone has an idea, lemme have it. Come the 7th, I'll have an extra guitar sitting around I can mess with as much as I want...