USB cable that is great for playing from the couch, but is long and unwieldy when sitting at a desk. I could never beat Number of the Beast and Slayer on Expert, the last 2 I needed to complete on my Les Paul but when I picked up my friends Xplorer I beat both songs within 3-4 tries. If you’d like to file an allegation of infringement, you’ll need to follow the process described in our Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy.

To play it a little safer I also added a 500 mA polyfuse so that I don’t accidentally overload the host port with my shenanigans. I made a pencil mark on this notch and then used a flat needle file to even the cutout to that level. the les paul is currently my guitar of choice, despite my hatred for wireless controllers and rhythm games. That issue also gave me a good excuse to redesign the board, using the correct pin spacing and an off-the-shelf cable.If you want to permanently fix overstruming and know how to solder, check out these replacement switches. After waiting a few weeks for the board to be manufactured and the components to arrive, it was finally time for assembly.

EDIT – Incorrect, it was actually for an additional ‘Effects Pedal’ peripheral that I had never even heard of before! You’ll find two ‘Alps’ switches soldered to it, with the strum sat in a housing that’s slid into the body and four screws to secure it. This controller was the last wired controller manufactured for the Guitar Hero franchise, and the only one with a direct USB connection, assuming you have the breakaway cable. To meet this need, Activision and RedOctane created the Xplorer Guitar, with its design drawing heavily from the iconic Gibson Explorer guitar.It is also the only guitar controller officially supported by Aspyr Media (developer of the PC and Macintosh releases). It’s not a substitute for learning an actual instrument, but it sure is a fun way to indulge in some musical gaming!

Since then, it’s proven to work seamlessly with other titles in the series, making it a popular choice for Guitar Hero fans. pinout for simplicity), I also needed to add two “cable connection” (CC) and cable type resistors to indicate that this was an “upstream facing port” (UFP). It's only an 18 ohm resistor (if that does say 180 on it) so just using the switch should be no problem. Modeled after a Gibson Explorer, the X-Plorer was released with Guitar Hero 2 and is still a popular choice today for Guitar Hero and Clone Hero players. You gotta hope he never throws a lefty on you and you have to memorize where he gets powerups and throw one right at him a second before.All of the work in handling electrostatic discharge (ESD) should already be taken care of on the main PCB, so this little board just needs to convert the downstream USB-A port into a USB-C port. I also considered switching to a vertical USB-C port, which would help the vertical alignment significantly due to the added distance from the PCB to the center of the port. It includes a breakaway connector (proprietary Xbox 360 to USB-A) so the guitar won’t pull the console off of its shelf, a ferrite choke, and a right angle strain relief boot molded directly into the cable. Using the boot as a reference, I designed a small plug in Fusion 360 and 3D printed it out of white ABS.