This is the internal contact switch for the strum bar of the guitar for the video game Rock Band. Dan was looking forward to whiling away all of New Year playing the game, strumming away like a big bastard. Then the strummer stopped working. Like a wily robot trapped alone in a house he shunned any official line of replace or repair, and headed straight for the screwdrivers and soldering iron. One of the two contact switches had snapped; probably due to them being made of very spindly metal. Dan couldn’t fix it. The result is that now the guitar doesn’t work, and is also in pieces. So is a Guitar Hero guitar, as a casualty of Dan’s attempt to salvage parts from it. This is really, really great for people who like things to be in tiny pieces, but not great for people who like Rock Band. Now we can’t play Rock Band, except for the drums and the singing.
Does this bit of metally plastic look familiar to anyone? Is it a standard thing, or a crazy invention from Harmonix? It would be great if Maplin sold bags of them, but I suspect they don’t.
Oh well.
UPDATE: I totally fixed it with scrap metal, superglue and solder. Alliteration equals success!
I was talking to Jeff about this the other day, and you should be able to get a catalogue. Rapid Electronics will probably send you a free catalogue, it’s where I used to get all my electronics stuff in school
Looks like a microswitch - just seen a photo of the innards of the controller:
http://www.odditorium.net/strummer.jpg
From the looks of it, it’s pretty basic - when you move the strummer, the big meaty bit of plastic moves upwards and pushes the two contacts together, of which the microswitch is one of them. Any bit of metal should do the job there, really… as long as when you downstrum you make the circuit you’re fine.
I’d be surprised if it’s proprietry though, you may have luck here:
http://www.rapidonline.com/searchresults.aspx?style=0&kw=microswitch
You may be able to bastardise this one:
http://www.rapidonline.com/productinfo.aspx?kw=microswitch&tier1=Electronic+Components&tier2=Switches&tier3=Microswitches&tier4=Z+series+microswitches&moduleno=73549
And one more…
http://www.marcospecialties.com/psearchresult.asp?Cc=PFLD-SWITCH&PageNo=1
My comment is awaiting moderation, apparantly. This one probably will be too.. curse you links.
Yeah, we had gathered how it worked. They’re not actual microswitches, just metal contacts. Looks like they’re better known as leaf switches. Good detective work though.