The wireless Les Paul guitar introduced with Guitar Hero III is my favorite fake plastic guitar of all time. I’ve owned them all, and I think the Les is a cut above in every category — it has style with the detachable faceplates, it has the best fret buttons, strum, whammy bar and start/select positioning, and it performs great. And it’s wireless!

But the Les, even though it’s arguably the best fake plastic guitar on the market, has one recurring problem area: the detachable neck. The neck doesn’t attach very firmly to the body in many of the Les Pauls out there, leading to the neck sliding around a bit as you play. This is aggravating at best — nobody likes a loose, slippery guitar when playing tricky sections. But it can be much, much worse. It can cause you to screw up songs when the buttons to fail to register due to the loose connection points between the neck and the guitar.

I’ve been hunting around for solutions to this loose neck problem for months, ever since Guitar Hero III was shipped in October. There are some low-tech fixes out there for the loose neck problem, such as:

1. Wrap a rubber band around the neck peg and the rear guitar strap peg
2. Move the neck contact board forward
3. Hard-wire the neck and permanently attach it to the guitar

I don’t like these solutions for various reasons, mostly because I think they’re too complicated and/or ghetto. I’d rather tighten up the neck connection itself with judicious use of tape. I’ve been experimenting with different tape locations for a while and I’ve finally found the perfect location for tape that gives a super-secure, rock-solid neck connection!

Simply place several sections of duct tape (or similar) on the neck itself, in the small rectangular area on each side of the neck, where the neck presses against the body of the guitar. See the picture, below– do this on both sides of the neck.

It will take at least two layers of duct tape on top of each other. For me, it took three to get a completely rock solid connection. The “push back” of the tape equalizes the neck pressure, so when you snap it in to the body, it’s held with quite a bit of force now. (Pushing the neck in will be a little bit harder, but it should snap in with a bit more force than without the tape).

You can see the tape mashed between the neck and the body of the guitar in this photo with the neck attached. There are three layers of black duct tape in this closeup.

I was ecstatic to finally stumble upon this great fix to my loose guitar neck problem, after months of trying so many different types of tape and so many locations on the neck and body.

With this simple tape mod, my Les Paul necks are now rock solid. They don’t budge an inch while I’m playing. They feel so solid now you’d swear they were permanently attached.. and they’re still easily removable, too!