Star Power Foot Pedal to a Guitar Hero Controller

This instructable will let you make a foot pedal for attaching to your Guitar Hero / Rock Band guitar, so that when you want to activate Star Power, instead of waving the controller around wildly, you simply step on a real guitar foot pedal.

This project is part of the OpenChord.org Guitar Hero controller series, and in this instructable I'll be making the pedal specifically for the OpenChord V1 controller, who's instructions you can find here. However, this also works for any other guitar hero controller.

For more information, please visit www.OpenChord.org!

Step 1: Basic Theory + Parts

So this is a really simple project. In the guitar hero controller, star power is activated by a simple switch that detects if the guitar is pointed straight up or not. It's a little mechanical switch, so all we'll be doing will be soldering 2 extra wires to our foot pedal's switch and then connecting them to the place where that controller sensor is.

You'll need:

1 guitar foot pedal
2 long strands of wire, at least 4 so feet long - ideally, these strands will be connected together
1 Guitar Hero controller
Small screwdrivers
Soldering equipment
Heat shrink / electrical tape

Optional (and used in this instructable)

Small bits of wire
Wire connectors - I wound up using an actual guitar cable I had lying around, but if you have a male/female set of audio jacks, those will work nicely too. This will let you store the guitar and pedal separately.

Step 2: Take It Apart

So you'll want to disassemble both the pedal and the guitar. For both, a small set of screwdrivers should suffice. In the guitar, you're looking for a little switch something like in the picture, while you'll need to get access to the actual switch part in the foot pedal.

Step 3: Connect the Pedal

We'll start with the foot pedal. Somewhere on the actual switch located inside the foot pedal, solder your two wires onto either side of the switch. Then, find a convenient place for the wires to leave out of the foot pedal.

In my version, I soldered two small wires first, then soldered them onto a cut-open section of guitar cord that I then passed through one of the output jacks, since I'm not really going to use this pedal for anything but this. If you're using your own jack, solder the male end of the jack onto the free end of the wire.

Put the pedal back together.

Step 4: Connect the Guitar

Find where the switch is that activates Star Power and de-solder it from it's wires. Then solder the wire that goes down to the foot pedal onto these wires, covering the connections with heat shrink or electrical tape. Find a good place for the wires to come out of the guitar, and put it back together.

If you're using a jack / connector instead of just one big wire, find a good place on the body of the guitar and install the jack / connector there. This way, the jack will be as close as possible to the guitar so you don't have 4 feet of extra cord getting in the way when you put your guitar away. Then, using extra wire, connect the jack up to the

In this particular version, using the OpenChord V1, I attached the wires directly to the wires leading to the output jack on my guitar. This way, I plug in my modified foot pedal into my guitar like you would a regular foot pedal, and it looks pretty sweet.

Step 5: You're Done! Rock Out!

Now you're done! Go plug everything in and test it out, and let me know if you like this modification! For more information about the whole project, visit www.OpenChord.org.