Rock Band Solo Button Swap Mod

By JP • Apr 18th, 2008 • Category: Guides, Guitar, Mods

The solo buttons on the Rock Band Stratocaster controller are a great addition to “rhythm game” controllers.  However, they can be difficult to use during gameplay, especially if you have large hands.  Wouldn’t it be great if you were able to use the standard fret buttons to act just like the solo buttons, ie no strumming during solo sections or Big Rock Endings?  Well, that’s what this extremely simple mod sets out to do. 

This mod should only take about 5-10 minutes to complete.

Supply List:

  • 1 Phillips Head Screwdriver

  

Step 1 - Remove Screws:

Using your screwdriver, remove the 16 screws from the back of the guitar body as indicated in the picture below: 

Rock Band Stratocaster controller back

Step 2 - Remove Button Ribbon Cable:

Find the ribbon cable for the buttons as indicated below: 

Strat controller guts

This picture was taken from a first generation controller, so your’s may not look exactly the same inside, but the ribbon cable is in the same location on all versions of the Strat controller.

You can now remove the ribbon cable from the connector pins by gently pulling the cable back.

Standard button connector

Step 3 - Flip Ribbon Cable Upside Down:

Flip the ribbon cable upside down and reattach the cable to the connector pins. 

Button connector reversed

Step 4 - Reattach Guitar Body:

Line up the guitar body bottom and top pieces and tighten all screws that were removed in step 1. 

Rock Band Stratocaster controller back

You should now be able to use the top fret buttons just like the solo buttons and the solo buttons now require strumming during the “solo” sections.

Rating:

Pros:

  • Nothing to purchase
  • Extremely easy

Cons:

  • Some may consider it cheating

 

Overall:

The Rock Band solo button swap mod is extremely easy to do and only requires a phillips head screwdriver, which just about everyone should have.  It also makes using the solo buttons much, much easier, especially if you have large mits.

I guess the only downside is that some may consider it cheating, but that’s only important if you care about what others think about you.

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14 Responses »

  1. Sebas on July 26th, 2008 at 1:26 pm:

    Can you get banned from Live for this? (can the game tell you made the swap?)

  2. JP on July 27th, 2008 at 9:29 pm:

    You can’t get banned from live and both the game and Live have no way of knowing that this was done. However, the ease of this mod is only available on the first two generations of Rock Band guitars. If your connectors don’t look like the ones pictured, than it will be much more difficult to do.

  3. dylan on August 26th, 2008 at 2:33 pm:

    i am so mad they must have found out about this mod because it doesnt work with the wii virsion because it is so hard to get the ribbon out.

  4. R0gu3 on September 4th, 2008 at 3:27 pm:

    Does this take away from the lower frets being able to do it too or?

  5. mod on September 27th, 2008 at 1:00 pm:

    my ribbon wire is multicolored and doesnt slide out like the 1st generation one did, any ideas on how to fix this?

  6. CWG67 on October 24th, 2008 at 6:51 am:

    I tried this mod last night and it didn’t work.

    From the pictures provided it looks like the guts of the guitar are different than mine (e.g. no wire leading to the upper left edge of the guitar).

    Maybe it only works on certain generations of guitars?

  7. CWG67 on October 24th, 2008 at 6:52 am:

    Sorry, I meant to say upper right edge of the guitar.

  8. JP on October 24th, 2008 at 2:07 pm:

    This fine folks at Harmonix must have seen how easy it was to do this mod and changed the hardware accordingly. Apparently, this mod only works on the very early generation of guitars (ver. 1 & 2).

  9. MIKEWHO on October 31st, 2008 at 12:09 pm:

    NO THIS MODS STILL WORKS.. GOT THE NEW RB2 GUITAR AND DID THE MOD.. IT WAS DIFFICULT BUT IT WORKS… THE WHOLE “FINGER TAP” THING IS A CROCK IF YOU ASK ME, BUT THE SOLOS ARE SO CRAZY YOU KINDA NEED IT : p OH AND I’M ON PS3 PLATFORM…

  10. JP on October 31st, 2008 at 12:29 pm:

    I haven’t had a chance to tear apart my RB2 guitar yet to see what the innards are made of. I think that will be my weekend project, and if it can be done on the new strats, the I’ll post a guide on that as well.

  11. JMT on November 8th, 2008 at 3:53 pm:

    Hey, I have RB1, when I tried this mod, I noticed that there is a separate ribbon for each set of frets (one for “high” frets and one for normal ones). The set of ribons for the “high” frets are located on the left edge of the curcuitboard, (the same location as JP’s), but the ribbon for the larger frets are on the bottom edge of the circuitboard. First, I tried flipping the ribbon for the large frets over, but when I played, it was all screwed up. Then, I tried it with BOTH ribbons flipped over, but when I played with either set of frets, everything was screwed up… And it wouldn’t work when I tried it with the high fret ribbon flipped and the ther one right side up either. I put it back to normal now, and its working fine, but I wanted to see if anyone could help.

  12. JMT on November 8th, 2008 at 4:50 pm:

    OK this tells how stupid I am.
    Im not 100% sure, maybe more like 99%, but all I need to do is switch the two ribbons.
    This will make the high frets work like the regular ones and vise versa. I wouldnt need to flip anything.

  13. JMT on November 13th, 2008 at 6:50 pm:

    ^That didnt work.^

  14. Ryoko44 on December 24th, 2008 at 9:35 pm:

    does any one know how to do this for the rock band 2 guitar theres only one ribbon i can see

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