As you may have spotted from the pictures around the internet Activision's Guitar Hero 5, which is due to launch on 1st September, will feature new instruments (as if you don't already have enough plastic toys littering your life!)

Guitar

The guitar features a new slider/ touchpad which will send signals digitally improving responsiveness and lag and apparently improving feedback to the player. Other features are an improved strummer mechanism for better reliability and of course the new look colour scheme. Oh and the strummer will be dimpled to aid grip - ooh!

Drums

Because we have no new technical details about the drums we can only comment on what you can see in the pictures from the official Guitar Hero Store Blog

As you can see the big changes are the cymbal being round and not wedge shaped, like you might see in a lot of higher quality e-drum kits, the 'Rockband' style bass pedal which clips onto the frame, this is supposed to keep the thing in position and stop it moving around but I, like may others, like putting the pedals out to the side so it will be interesting to see how many fans this move wins...

Other things to note are the front position of the controller unit which also has its pro's and con's; you will be able to use the buttons to navigate the games menus easier and hopefully be able to plug in your wired headsets and not have the wire trailing over the drums while you are trying to play, but on the other hand how many of you are convinced you will end up hitting it in a fit of drumming genius?

Apart from the cosmetic changes we will have to wait and see what performace improvments come with the new kit, hopefully Red Octane have fixed some of the issues the GH4 kit had without making it feel too much like a game controller. Oh the other thing to point out is that these 'pictures' are actually 3D renders so we have yet to see the first kit in the skin.

What are your thoughts on the new instruments? Looking forward to getting some more or are you happy that you have now finally got your GH4 instruments the way you want them and are not prepared to fork out for new ones?

Well sort of anyway.....

Nicknamed "DeepNote" this collection of transistors, relays and LEDs forms part of a clever little project to read the notes from the screen. Quite basic circuitry which shouldn't cost the earth means we can see this being used to form a type of Guitar Hero Robot Wars. Fancy building one?

'Nuff said, here's the vid:

We are constantly receiving emails from readers who are looking for replacement cymbal cables for the Guitar Hero World Tour Drum Kit. It seems the most common cause of these cymbal cables breaking is that people either twist the cymbals all the way around or take them off, forgetting that they have a cable coming from the bottom of them, and with only a slight tug... 'snap'!

We were always happy to help trying to source replacements but then it dawned on us, why replace weak cables that are proven to break regularly with the same thing? Why not try and make a better one! That's exactly what we did!

After weeks of testing and prototypes the shipments of our new upgraded cables are here and they are excellent!

Made from thicker, more durable wire, they also have plugs which are straight (as opposed to the angled ones on GHWT cables) which have a much greater surface area to grip onto the cable. They are also longer, allowing you to leave yourself a bit of slack in the wire for when your ham fisted friends try and take the cymbal off!

They are easy to fit requiring only the small phillips or torx screwdriver needed to get the back off your drums then its plug and play! Full detailed colour instructions are included as is any email help required

We have been using them for a while and find them a great upgrade tell us what you think!

To order these please click here or for any other parts just head on over to our Parts Store