All Things IT Blog

Has your Guitar Hero 2 Controller Whammy Bar gone limp on you? No worries! Fixing a broken Guitar Hero controller Whammy Bar is really, super simple. It’ll only take five minutes and will save you the $49 it would cost to purchase a new one.

Tools Required: Small Phillips Head Screw Driver

Time Required: 5 Minutes

IQ Required: Slightly above a chimp

First, position your Guitar Hero controller on a flat surface face down allowing you access to the small screws on the back:

[zoomer]57|550|0|Guitar Hero Controller — Back|1|0[/zoomer]

Once you have the back of the Guitar Hero controller removed, you’ll see the logic boards and devices inside. The green board in the center of the guitar is the strummer. The green logic board on the top right is the main logic board with the USB controller and controller ICs. The little thing on the bottom? That’s your whammy bar! That’s right, all of your thrashing solos were brought to life by a little spring and a simple variable resistor!

[zoomer]58|550|0|Guitar Hero Controller — Back Removed|1|0[/zoomer]

What you’ll need to do is take a look at the Whammy Bar at the bottom. You’ll see that basically the Whammy Bar is only pressing against two posts held together with a small spring. Usually when your Whammy Bar breaks, one of two things happens.

• The spring just breaks. It up and dies. Kicks the bucket. In this case, what you’ll want to do is tie a rubber band around the two posts. Tie it as tight as you want, but be sure to check that it doesn’t put up too much resistance or else it might be a little tough to use the Whammy Bar.
• The Whammy Bar slips out from between the two posts. This is the most common occurrence. Since it’s not too firmly built, it’s very common for the Whammy Bar to just slip out from between the spring posts and flop around limply. To fix this, simple push it back between the posts.

[zoomer]59|550|0|Guitar Hero Controller — Whammy Bar Inside|1|0[/zoomer]

[zoomer]60|550|0|Guitar Hero Controller — Whammy Bar Inside 2|1|0[/zoomer]

I hope this helps you fix your broken Guitar Hero controller an get back to rocking! The controller I used was the X-Plorer wired controller for the XBox 360. I’m fairly certain the hardware used in other variations of the game (such as the PS2, PS3 and Wii versions) use the same method of operating the Whammy Bar.

Cheers!