Both of the new guitars introduced with Guitar Hero III– the Playstation 2 Kramer Striker, and the Xbox 360, Wii, and PS3 Les Paul– have removable necks. This is quite handy for packing and storing your guitar, but it can also lead to connectivity problems between the buttons on the neck and the body.

One relatively easy fix for most (but not all) intermittent button issues on guitars with removable necks is to add a dab of Dielectric grease to the neck contacts. Dielectric grease is only a couple bucks at your local hardware store (look in the automotive section).

Today’s victim is one of my Kramer Striker guitars.

You can see that I’ve done the silver fret mod, added a custom strap, and painted it metallic black. What you can’t see is that I’ve also added internal weights to it, too. What can I say? I’m a fake plastic guitar mod addict.

Remove the neck from the guitar by depressing the lever on the back, then gently glide it out.

Slide the neck up and out, then flip it around to look at the contacts on the end.

Put a dab of the dielectric grease on each of the neck contacts. Don’t worry, the dielectric grease is NOT CONDUCTIVE, so you don’t have to do it perfectly.

When we slide the neck in, those contacts will touch these pins in the body of the guitar, here.

I’m not entirely sure why this works. I think it reduces the friction between the pins in the guitar body and the contact surface in the guitar neck.

But the proof is in the fake plastic guitar rocking — after applying this fix to my guitars with removable necks, intermittent and dropped button problems almost never occur any more!