We are very happy to bring you the latest product in our range of repair and upgrade parts for your Guitar Hero Instruments, the long awaited Solderless Drum Repair Kit.

We have been selling a drum repair kit on Guitar Hero Repair for a while now, but the feedback we have been getting is that it is quite fiddly and difficult to fit, well in response to this we have now launched the new version of this kit.

It can be used to fix any of your main drum pads on both the Guitar Hero and Band Hero drum kits and takes no more than 10 minutes to fit with just a screwdriver needed. We have also made a video tutorial to guide you through the installtion process, you can see all of this on the new Solderless Drum Repair Kit page now!

GH gamers love their guitars. They also fall into two categories, those that kept them pristine, wrapper fresh and those that covered them with those lovely Activision stickers. To set your guitar apart from the crowd you should look into designing your own Guitar Hero Custom Vinyl Skin.What you have on yours is only limited by your own imagination, you favourite band, your holiday photos, pictures of your dog, anything is possible and this is how easy it is.

Head over to Unique Skins and choose what device you want to design a skin for, they can do it all - Guitar Hero, DJ Hero, games consoles, mobile phones, laptops you name it and they can do it!

Use their excellent online design software to create your ideal custom skin. You can use any selection of text, images and backgrounds from their extensive library and even upload images from your own computer to design exactly what you want.

Once you have played about with your design and got it to you liking just press the add to cart button, enter your payment and shipping details and then couple of days later your personally designed skin will land on your doorstep.

Installation is simple and thanks to some high tech vinyls from 3M, bubbles under the vinyl are a thing of the past. The backing of the vinyl features very clever air channels that push even the smallest pockets of air out with no fuss. They will last a lifetime with no wear of fade and can even be removed leaving no sticky residue if required, and the latest tech they have in now allows you to specify gel filled vinyls if you want a more tactile feel. For only $17 we cannot think of a better way to customise your guitars.

If you get one we would love to see what you have made so send in your pictures, if they are good we will even offer up a 15% discount for you to use on anything else we sell from our repair parts section.

Our recommended soldering irons for your guitar hero instrument electronic repairs

	DRAPER 230V 25W SOLDERING KIT

	40w Soldering Iron 230v ( Brand New & Top Quality )

	CORDLESS Anti Static Wrist strap band no earth Ground wire required. self dissipating.

	HQ Temperature Controlled Soldering Station with LED Display

	Replacement Solder Iron End 30W Soldering Iron 1.0MM

	50W SOLDERING IRON STATION ADJUSTABLE TEMPERATURE

	SOLDER, IRON & STAND KIT

	48W PROFESSIONAL SOLDER STATION ADJUSTABLE SOLDERING IRON TEMPERATURE WITH LCD DISPLAY + 2M OF LEAD FREE SOLDER

	Weller Featherweight Solder Iron

	Gunson 77073 Soldering Iron Battery Powered

	Laser 3658 Gas Soldering Iron

	Laser 4079 Soldering Iron 60watt

	Further Observations on the Buyers or Receivers of Stolen Goods, Particularly of Lead, Iron, Copper, Brass, Bell Metal, and Solder. with Some Extracts

	Brazing and Soldering: Solder, Soldering Iron, Preform, Soldering, Thermal Profiling, Brazing, Wave Soldering, Coldheat, Reflow Soldering

Did you know you can connect your e-drums up to your console and use them to play Guitar Hero with? Well one of our lovely site visitors has done you a nice easy to follow guide to help you on your way!

This example is for the Xbox 360 but it should work just the same on any console.

To get your e-drum working with Guitar Hero on the Xbox 360 you need a least the following six things:

- an e-drum with a MIDI Output, e.g. Roland TD-12,
- the Xbox 360 Controller Box from the Guitar Hero drum kit,
- the Drum Brain from the Guitar Hero drum kit (it's called "DRUM SYNTH V2R00" on the circuit board),
- the MIDI Input from the Guitar Hero drum kit,
- a MIDI cable,
- a Guitar Hero game which supports drums (all versions including World Tour and up should work).

You can get all of these parts (except the MIDI cable) from the guitar hero spare parts store for a very reasonable price. Of course you can get a Guitar Hero Drum Kit and use this as your MIDI connector to the Xbox, but that might take up a little bit too much space in your living room.

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Now to the setup:
1) Connect the Drum Brain to the Xbox Controller. Make sure that the red cable is connected to the pin marked "CK".
2) Connect the MIDI Input to the Drum Brain. The red cable must align with the "Kick" pin.
3) Connect your e-drum's MIDI Output with the MIDI cable to the Guitar Hero's MIDI Input.
4) Put some batteries in the Xbox Controller, turn on your e-drum and the Xbox Controller and start Guitar Hero (at least World Tour, Guitar Hero III doesn't support drums). Make sure, the Xbox Controller is paired and works (i.e. you can navigate the menus).
5) If your e-drum sends the standard MIDI notes for the different pads on the standard MIDI channel for drums, you should be set and ready to go. Just choose Drums as your instrument and give it a try.

That was easy, wasn't it?! For a little more tweaking, just read on.

Hm, what to do, if the e-drum doesn't use the correct MIDI channel or notes? That involves a little bit more of work, but no magic at all.

Go to your devices MIDI setup (check with your manual on how to get
there) and set your e-drum's transmit channel to 10. This setting is usually buried somewhere in the global settings.

Now the only thing left to do is to set the pads to send the correct MIDI notes for Guitar Hero. This setting is usually done in the pad's settings section. You need to setup them up like this:

Red Pad: Note 38,
Yellow Pad: Note 46,
Blue Pad: Note 48,
Green Pad: Note 45,
Orange Pad: Note 49,
Purple Pad (Kick Pedal): Note 36.

The Red pad is usually a Snare Drum sound, so it's a good idea to map your SD pad to note 38. Blue and Green are Tom Sounds, Yellow and Orange are Hi Hat resp. Cymbal. Purple is the Kick Pedal (Bass Drum).

If that didn't work, first try the other MIDI connector on your e-drum.
Sometimes the MIDI connectors are labeled weird regarding Input/Output.

If you have got multi-zone pads that send different notes when being hit in different zones, make sure to map them to the same note. E.g., a Snare Drum pad is usually equipped with a rim and head sensor. You want Guitar Hero to recognize both sensors, so set both to Note 38. The same applies for multi-zone Cymbal Pads and so on.

Of course you can map your pads to your liking. I have my Ride pad and the Hi Hat mapped to the same note and both the Crash pads mapped to the other colour, so that you are free to play the rhythm stuff on the HH or Ride to your liking (or whatever the sounds in Guitar Hero are like ...;-) ).

Hope you enjoy it. If you have any problems, just drop a note in the comments.

Many thanks to our reader for that nice tutorial.

We couldn't stop without having a little play ourselves and have come up with a nice little mod to this guide, allowing you to enclose all the parts in the original controller box. The mod is quite simple all you need to do it to cut the GHWT midi port out and replce it with a slick looking surface mounted one which will cost pennies.

Open the back of the controller box by removing the four screws in the back

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Cut the circuit board off the end of the Guitar Hero midi port cable leaving you with as much of the ribbon cable attached as possible, You wil see that the ribbon cable is made up of 6 wires, we only need wires 3 and 4 (doesn't matter which way you look at it, it's the middle two!). You need to strip and solder these two wires onto your surface mounted midi port, attaching them to the same pins as they were attached to before (The red and yellow lines on the image show where they were attached, look at your own it will become clear, just make sure you have the midi port the right way up!)

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Drill a hole in the side for the port to go through and your done! You should have plenty of room to fit everything back inside the controller box, leaving you with one small neat box to connect up!

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If your one of your drum pads are broken you have a number of options, throw in the towel and get a new drum kit (...Whaaat! We are in a recession don't you know!), get one of our drum repair kits, or replace the whole drumpad (which you can get from our Guitar Hero parts store)

This is a short video we have produced to show you just how easy it is to do! All you need is a new pad, a screwdriver and 5 spare minutes take a look and tell us what you think. If you have any problems with this or any other Guitar Hero related problem take a look in our Guitar Hero repair forums

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

We had a few questions from visitors about their fret buttons not working. This is a troubleshooting guide to help you fix exactly that problem.

Obvious things first - make sure batteries are good and the controller is connected to your console!

Ideally you will have lots of friends who play Guitar Hero too ( if your friends do not play GH ditch them now and get some proper ones!), if this is the case you can borrow one of their guitars, swap the necks around and see if that makes the difference - This will confirm weather the issue is in the neck of guitar side of things.

If the different neck does not stop the problem then the first thing to do is check the connector inside the body of the guitar that the neck plugs into. This sits just inside the body of the guitar and should be well fixed into position and not full of dust - a tiny bit of movement is OK but if it is moving about a lot it is not making the connection to the neck properly and you are lucky if any of your buttons work! If this is fine then the problem either lies in the wiring inside the guitar or with the connection to your console - both of which are very difficult to fix so we shall leave there!

If the problem is in the neck of the guitar there are a few things you need to check see our troubleshooting video below

Download this video to watch later (wmv 6.5mb)

One thing to note with fret button problems is that they are not always traceable or fixable, due to the way the buttons work, if the board or connector is faulty then you really have no option but to buy another guitar as replacement of these parts if quite difficult.

If you have any questions about your fret button problems please post them here and we will try to help!

If you have snapped your strummer, killed your cymbals or battered your bass pedal half to death then you have come to the right place! Our GH Parts store stocks a full range of items for repairing or replacing whatever is wrong with your kit and stopping you having fun with it!

We have got a selection of items available and lots more on request so even if you are just missing a cymbal screw or stick holder to fix your drums or if your touch slider is broken you can rely on us to get you back in the game!

Check it out now but don't forget to bookmark it for later!

Updated!

We have now opened a forum for all your guitar hero questions as this page was getting a bit too big! You can now post all your problems and read the solutions here, and comments will be closed on this page from now on.

Send us your problems and we will answer them for you! See how simple an idea can be?

Following a few emails from people with different Guitar Hero problems we have decided to start this section. All you need to do is post your problems below and we will tell you how to sort them out with pictures and advice. We hope over time this will become a useful resource for people all over the world who need a bit of help sorting out any issue they have with drums, microphones or guitars, after all they take a lot of abuse and are going to need some TLC from time to time so why not ask to see if we have any guides for fixing broken whammy bars, neck sliders or why the red drum does not respond anymore!

To start you off here is a letter we received

Hi

I just found your site while looking through ebay and I was wondering about my Whammy bar which recently broke, well it still works but it just hangs down limp all the time and does not spring back anymore, it just sits there pressed down all the time. Any ideas on how I can fix this or have you come across this problem before?

Thanks Jay

Well as it happens we had seen this before. It is caused by a small spring on the back of the whammy bar which would either break, fall off a small anchor point inside the guitar or the small anchor point could have broken off. We sent Jay a few pictures of what he needed and he was back up in no time!

If you want your questions answered just post them below for all to see and we will get back to you.

Go to the new GHR forum here

Well its not the most complicated repair in the Guitarherorepair arsenal but there is not much about it on the web so I thought we would go through it (oh yes and it happened to me, on my kit yesterday!)

Problem:

While drumming like a hairy neanderthal you manage to hit the cymbal so hard it physically breaks the plastic holding it together.

Solution

The fix here is superglue nice and simple, when joining hard plastics superglue joins pretty much as hard as the original bond, it is cheap, fast and simple (unless you end up gluing your fingers together!)

What you will need to do is:

• Take the cymbal off
• unscrew the back cover ( so it looks like the one in the picture above)
• remove the rubber covering ( it is only held in place by a couple of spots of glue)
• examine the extend of the crack so you know where to apply the glue
• TOP TIP - breath heavily on the area to be glued just before you glue - superglue reacts with moisture in the air to make it harden so this just helps the process
• hold it in position for a minute or two
• reassemble and play

There are also some things you can do to prevent this problem happening

• don't hit it too hard (duh!)
• swap your cymbals around occasionally so one is not taking more abuse than the other
• reinforce the area with strong glue before this happens (do not get any glue near the sensor, this will affect the sensitivity of the pads)