Consider the Guitar Hero II Xplorer buttons. Subtle, they ain’t.

One of the many cool things about the new wireless guitars introduced with Guitar Hero III is that they use more subtle colored buttons. Compare the Xplorer buttons with the Les Paul and Kramer Striker buttons, which have colored edges but are black in the center.

Much cooler looking, I think, to the point that they make all the older guitars look positively Playskool in comparison. I wanted to update my older wired Gibson SG guitars with this more subtle, stylish black button look, too. Here’s how I did it.

First, I removed remove the buttons from the neck. This means disassembling the guitar. Pretty straightforward. You’ll need a few things here:

• Blue painter’s tape. We need this to mask off the edges of the button. We don’t want to paint the sides of the fret buttons, because the additional thickness of the paint will gum up the sides of the button wells. In a pinch, you can use regular masking tape or generic scotch tape too, but it might leave residue on the buttons. I recommend using the blue painter’s tape if possible, this is what it is designed to do.
• Vinyl spray paint. You must use Vinyl Paint, which is designed to be extra tough and survive extended handling. If you use regular spray paint on your guitar buttons, the skin oil and mashy rocker fingers will wear it off very rapidly! Ignore this advice, and you’ll be sorry.

I used the blue painter’s tape to mask off the edges of the buttons so only the top and a bit of the edge will get painted, then sprayed a quick coat of the Vinyl paint on the buttons.

Let it dry for a couple hours, then remove the tape.

They are safe to handle but not to play on! Mount them in the guitar and let them sit at least 48 hours to dry completely!

Looks pretty good– much better than the bright colors we had before, and the edges are still visible so new players can tell which button is which. It also stands up great to oily, mashy fingers, thanks to the tough vinyl paint.