Guitar Hero Broken Whammy Bar Repair Guide
Skill: Novice
Estimated time for repair: 20 minutes
Did your Guitar Hero 3 or World Tour whammy bar snap suddenly? And now it lays limp with no spring action?
In this guide you will learn how to quickly and easily repair the whammy without having to buy anything.
Featuring large photos of the repairs!
By Josh Straub, ©2009-2010
Please post this website link on forums and share with anyone with a broken whammy!
You'll know something's wrong when your whammy bar snaps. It happens all of a sudden and will cause the bar to flop loosely instead of it's normal spring-return action. The cause is a spring breaking off. The solution is to simply bend another loop from the remaining end of the spring! Let's get started. |
A Word About Warranty
Before we get to the fixes, you should know the official Activision/RedOctane policy is to visit http://www.activision.com/support and follow their RMA exchange process to get faulty/broken hardware replaced under warranty. The warranty is officially 90 days (although forum reports (March 2009) suggest that some customers have had no trouble getting their equipment replaced).
Obviously, opening your guitar and fixing/modifying it may not be warranty-friendly. If you want a guitar tweaked exactly the way you like it, and are comfortable taking matters into your own hands, then the fixes on this site are your solution.
Opening the Guitar
The process is largely the same as illustrated in my Loose Whammy Repair Guide. Follow that guide up to Step 3 first, and then let's proceed:
A Close Look At the Problem:
The Solution: Bend a New Loop on the Spring:
The fix is to use two needle-nose pliers (or similar tool) to pry up 1 coil from the broken end of the spring, and then carefully bend it into a new loop to match the unbroken side:
Now you need to re-stretch the spring across the two white plastic hooks. The hooks are small and delicate, so be gentle. To make things easy, bend a hook on the end of a metal paper clip and use this as a tool to grab and stretch the spring into position. Trust me, the paper clip hook makes this very easy!
Then it's just a matter of reassembling the guitar. Take your time and be sure not to pinch any wires when lining up the case halves. The neck connector circuit board might need to be guided into it's "home", the matching slot on the bare half of the guitar case. Don't forget to reinstall the shoulder strap hooks before you fasten all those little Torx screws!
Did this guide help you or save you from having to buy new instruments?
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Thanks man, this helped alot I though my whammy bar was broken for good. Now I just need to learn how to take apart the guitar. >.>
My son's Guitar Hero for Wii Whammy Bar is broken. A piece of the black plastic connected to the Whammy Bar broke off. So I need that Black plastic part connected to the Whammy Bar and locked with a locking pin. Do you have or know anybody selling that part?
Roy
626-617-1191
royramos0706@yahoo.com
is there a place to buy replacement springs?
yeah the spring is fine but the black plastis broke on mine too. Im stuck.
For the information here, the guitar body is taken apart with Torx screwdrivers, Torx 6 & 10 to be precise. These screws can be accessed by removing the faceplate from the top of the guitar (where the strum bar is). You remove the faceplate by taking a thin object, like a butter knife, and slide it under the faceplate, there are a few places where there are faceplate anchors, and they basically pop out with brute force, it may sound like you broke something when you take it off, but don't be alarmed.
As for the plastic parts being broken, I don't think there is much you can do. You probably can't get replacement parts because you voided the warranty
Kevin, you might have overlooked part "Opening the Guitar": http://5frets.com/19/guitar-hero-broken-whammy-bar-fix/#OpeningGuitar where I mentioned:
I just put a rubber band on it attached to the guitar strap attachment, works just fine
Well for the black plastic tang that breaks off here is the fix. My tang busted and I decided to fix it myself, so I took the original spring off of the 2 white plastic pieces and took one loop and straightened one ond to make a hook instead of a loop. I took a safety pin (large one, but a paperclip will work fine) heated up the tip and put a hole in the half moon black plastic piece that the actual whammy bar goes through and hooked the modified spring end to it and then stretched the spring to the stationary white plastic piece and put the loop end of the spring on it. Put it all back together and it has been working this way for over 4 months now and it is the same tightness as the original design. No new parts to buy just one small hole to make in the half moon piece. Make the hole on the half moon below where the white V original attachment point is and just slightly more (I mean slightly) toward the bottom of the guitar. Hope this helps as it is not very difficult to improvise and improve on original design, you just need patience and thinking capabilities.
Is there a repair guide for the "star power" tilt sensor? Out of the box, I would literally have to shake my guitar violently up and down to get it to register. It's hard to look cool while rocking out with plastic instruments when flailing the guitar around like a drunken wombat….
=)
when i opened my guitar thinking the spring brook i relized the plastic in between the spring brook i thought i was screwed, but then i thought if i warped a string around the movable spring hook to the base piece it might work. and surprisingly it works great ROCK ON!!!!
thanks for the repair guid but do you know were i can find the wammy bar for guitar hero 3 it doesnt work at all