Xbox 360 Guitar Hero 3 controller > Arcade stick

[tkkara]

Hello all,

Just wondering if anyone has tried to hack a Guitar Hero controller for the Xbox 360 to make an arcade stick? With SF4 recently coming out I'd like to play the game the way it's meant to be played, without have to drop AUD150-200 for a arcade stick.

I'm guessing that a guitar controller would be easier to hack than a regular 360 controller because the pcb would already have wiring in place. Any thoughts/experience?

[Blaine]

I'm going to do something I do all the time, and it's probably a bad thing, but I'm gonna do it anyways. I'm going to pretend like you asked:

"What's a cheap and easy 360 controller to sacrifice for a DIY stick"

Good question! While it's availability in the land of a thousand...Australians... is unknown to me, the Mad Catz GameStick is one of the better ones:

http://www.madcatz.com/Default.asp?Page=319

Pros:
Despite what the website says, it's dirt cheap. A lot of places have it for $9 US.
Much like you and me, we both speak English, these joysticks use a Common Ground (most 360 joysticks do not).
It comes with free Frogger. Don't you want free Frogger?

You can get it on eBay. That's fun.

Now then, can you use a Guitar? Um... yeah. You could probably even use the old shell of the guitar for a kick-ass case for your new joystick.

There are, however, some oddities inside of those controllers. For example, the Rockband guitar has 12 UNIQUE colored buttons. The ones on the top of neck and the ones really close to the body of the guitar actually pass different signals for gameplay usage (the guitar knows when you're using the small fret buttons). I'm not sure how it's doing it, but it knows.

There's other wires in there that change the Overdrive effect from chorus to echo to wah-wah, there's a circuit that detects tilting.

What I'm getting at is, you'll be doing some trailblazing. It'll be an experimenting process. If your goal in picking the guitar was because it'll be easier, I'm not sure if that's really the case. Yeah it's pre-wired but...

[tkkara]

Thanks for the detailed response. Unfortunately, there are not too many Madcatz controller over here in the land of many kangaroos.

I noticed that Ben Heck used the guts from a  guitar controller for his Atari 2600 to Xbox 360 joystick hack. I will do a little more research before I go out on a limb...

[Blaine]

Go for it. If you ultimately decide to go for one, I'll be happy to ship you one over.

[duo_r]

I hacked a 360 wireless stick, and it made a very nice wireless 360 arcade stick. That is gong to be your best bet! I can link up a forum that I used for wiring reference. There are some controllers easier to hack than others, but I went the 1st party approach.