Frederf
12-03-2007, 02:39 PM
I recently unscrewed the back of my Stratocaster (XB360) controller to have a look inside and see what's what with the strum. After picking out the hot glue gun spider webs from manufacture I saw how the steel contacts work in my controller version.
On top of that I found some little nubs, like places springs might be anchored on the movable white strum plastic piece and each nub's cousin about 3/4" away on the black guitar shell inside. I thought the strum could be a bit stiffer light a taunt string so I tried making little rubber bands and tieing the nubs together with the bands.
Newspaper rubber bands would be too thick. Ideally I'd want to use some tiny orthodontic rubber bands but I couldn't find any (been off braces a while now, brother too). Eventually I used some regular (but rather thin still) rubber bands (Work Essentials by Swingline if you care) by cutting a couple and tieing a square knot after wrapping the rubber string around two adjacent tuning pegs on the headstock while pulling them rather tight. This allowed me to make two small rubber bands of approximately the same size/tension.
I placed one band around each pair of nubs and a third around the nubs associated with the whammy (over the spring) and put all the screws back in.
The new strum is awesome. The tension feels a lot closer to the tightness of an actual guitar string than the rather mushy original strum. No longer does the strum move in the full limits of its rotation but smaller motions that feel stiffer.
The Whammy is easier to use since the new spring+rubber band combo is less weak although I've never used a real whammy to have anything to compare it to.
At first I was worried that my modification would cause problems so I loaded up The Killers' song on expert since that has quite a lot of straight 8th notes which should be a good test for rapid single and double strumming. An absolute joy.
On top of that I found some little nubs, like places springs might be anchored on the movable white strum plastic piece and each nub's cousin about 3/4" away on the black guitar shell inside. I thought the strum could be a bit stiffer light a taunt string so I tried making little rubber bands and tieing the nubs together with the bands.
Newspaper rubber bands would be too thick. Ideally I'd want to use some tiny orthodontic rubber bands but I couldn't find any (been off braces a while now, brother too). Eventually I used some regular (but rather thin still) rubber bands (Work Essentials by Swingline if you care) by cutting a couple and tieing a square knot after wrapping the rubber string around two adjacent tuning pegs on the headstock while pulling them rather tight. This allowed me to make two small rubber bands of approximately the same size/tension.
I placed one band around each pair of nubs and a third around the nubs associated with the whammy (over the spring) and put all the screws back in.
The new strum is awesome. The tension feels a lot closer to the tightness of an actual guitar string than the rather mushy original strum. No longer does the strum move in the full limits of its rotation but smaller motions that feel stiffer.
The Whammy is easier to use since the new spring+rubber band combo is less weak although I've never used a real whammy to have anything to compare it to.
At first I was worried that my modification would cause problems so I loaded up The Killers' song on expert since that has quite a lot of straight 8th notes which should be a good test for rapid single and double strumming. An absolute joy.
