Broken Guitar Hero Drum Pad

ChillyWilly

Alright, all you freelance electrical engineering wizards: I need your help.


The "snare" drum (red pad) on my guitar hero drum set has broken. I don't hit the drums hard at all and all of the other buttons work just fine, so it's not broken from abuse. It just stopped working one day.

Have any of you guys had to fix yours before? Any ideas on if it's a simple fix or if I should just go buy a new one (which I would love to avoid doing)?

Dachshund

I had a pad stop functioning once. The pads are held in place such that you can pop them off easily with your fingers. Just start at any point on the circumference and work your way around. Once off, the pad will be connected to the kit by a wire. Upon close inspection of mine, I discovered that the wire had been squashed through due to my beatin' (and the fact that the little foam cushion was displaced somehow). I soldered the wire back together and replaced the foam. Voila, working pad! The same thing happened to a friend's pad and he just twisted the wire back together. Still works!

You may have a different problem of course, but you'll most likely figure it out by looking inside the drum.

EDIT: forgot to mention, this was on a RB 1 kit. I do have a RB 2 kit that I have opened just for kicks and it looks the same inside.

iglidante

I had a similar problem with the orange button on my GH3 controller. I took apart the neck and saw that all the buttons and contacts were immaculate. In the end, the problem was with the connector at the base of the neck (pins pressed against contact points on a circuit board) - one of the pins had driven through the metal contact and was only making an intermittent connection. I glossed the "hole" with a tiny bit of solder, and it works perfectly now.

So, check your contacts. A bad wire is even easier.

ASIDE: I once fixed a friend's GH1 controller by cutting the cable past the plug, knotting it, and reconnecting all the wires by twisting them together and "insulating" them with pieces of a plastic shopping bag. Ghetto, but it actually worked. We had no tools on hand.