Repaired: GH2 Xplorer
One of our Xplorer guitars for Guitar Hero has been on-the-fritz for a while; wouldn’t stay connected - short in the cable. Finally getting sick of it, I found www.guitarheroparts.com and ordered a replacement USB cable for $13 + ship. I also discovered that there’s no simple "plug" for this as wires are soldered into a connector on a circuit board. This would require some soldering - of which I’ve never done before.
So I ran off to Menards and picked up a cheap soldering iron and some electric solder and started the repair.
After opening the guitar, I snipped off the old USB cable leaving about 2" of wire attached to the circuit board. I had to strip the wires back a bit so I could intertwine them and then solder them to the new cable; matching the colors. After everything cooled off, I tested the guitar and it seems to work just fine now. I reassembled and gave it a thorough testing. Works great.
Some drawbacks:
- The cable is just a straight USB cable and doesn’t conform to the Xplorer’s attachment at the body. So some hot glue is in order to keep things in place
- The cable is about a 12" shorter which may cause you to get a USB extension cable.
- Could I have gotten away with just standard USB cable from MonoPrice.com for a fraction of the cost? I don’t know - probably.
It’s not ideal but it get’s our second controller back in-the-game. Ultimately, I’d be nice to get the GH3 Gibson Wireless - we’ll see. Maybe when my gift cards come in.