I mentioned in a previous post that you could lubricate your guitar fret buttons to reduce the noise and improve the overall feel.

Your fake plastic guitar strum can benefit from a little judicious lubrication, too. Think of all the relentless up and down strum action it sees in every jam session!

The easiest way to lubricate is to spray a little silicone lubricant into the strum hinge, at the areas marked below. Be sure that you have 100% silicone spray lubricant — no petroleum distallates — that is safe for plastic! If you do not use pure silicone lubricant, you can eat away or melt the plastic in your guitar, so be careful! One brand that I can recommend is Silicone Shock Oil.

Just spray a little in the marked areas around the edge of the strum, Then use a paper towel to wipe away any excess. This is a convenient way to lubricate your strum; it doesn’t require disassembling the guitar.

However, If you’re willing to disassemble your guitar, you can do a more thorough job of lubricating the strum. After opening the guitar, unscrew the four philips screws holding the strum assembly to the guitar.

Pull the strum assembly off to reveal the strum buttons, the strum itself, and the two plastic bridge pieces on the right and left of the strum that hold it in place.

(If the clicking of the guitar strum bothers you, these two buttons are the culprit. There are ways to remove the clickers, but that’s a mod for another day.)

We’ll use the lithium grease crayon. You can find this at your local hardware store in the automotive section for a few bucks.

Pull out the two plastic bridge pieces holding the strum in place on each end, and take out the strum. The primary lubrication point is the metal bar inside the strum. Use the lithium grease crayon to thoroughly “paint” both ends of the metal bar.

Lubricating the metal rod in the strum is probably sufficient, but if you’re a completionist, there are a few more lubrication points: the strum well corners where the bar is held in place, and/or the bottom part of the bridge pieces where they contact the metal bar.

Once you’re done, place the strum back in the well, slide the plastic bridge pieces into place, then reattach the strum button circuit board.

Now enjoy the super-smooth lubricated strum action on your fake plastic guitar!

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.

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!

If you’re interested in quieting down the fret button noise on your guitar, or if you just want smoother button action, here’s an easy mod.

Pick up a white lithium grease crayon at your local hardware store. This is usually in the automotive or lubricant section. It’s only a few bucks.

Remove the buttons from the guitar neck. I documented how to remove the fret buttons in an earlier post.

Once you have the buttons out, apply the white lithium grease around the edges of the button, as pictured. Don’t go too high, but cover around all the edges.

Replace the buttons in the neck, and enjoy smoother, quieter button action!

One of the common fret button tweaks is to insert a bit of thin material under the buttons so they’re more responsive. Here’s how. Let’s start with the Kramer wireless PS2 guitar neck– but the procedure is very similar on the wireless Les Paul.

We’ll need our old friend, the T-10 Torx screwdriver..

.. to remove all the screws from the back of the neck. Flip the neck over and dump the screws– make sure they all come out– then pry the two halves of the neck shell apart.

What’s inside is very simple. On one end we have the contacts that the body pins push against when the neck is inserted in the guitar (note that I have lubricated these contacts with dielectric grease for better performance) ..

The ribbon cable connects the neck contacts with the button circuit board. To remove this, use a small philips screwdriver on the two screws that hold each end.

Under the circuit board is a small rubber spacer. When the fret buttons are pressed, they depress this rubber spacer, which presses on the circuit board to register a button press. Remove this spacer by gently pulling it loose.

Under this, of course, are the fret buttons themselves. This is a also a good time to lubricate your fret buttons with white lithium grease while you have them out!

You can remove the fret buttons as well, if you need to; they just slide right out of the neck.

As you can see the neck is remarkably simple; there’s almost nothing in it. About the only mod that makes any sense is to tighten up the button travel for better response. To do that, cut several small square shims from thin cardboard, plastic, or heavy card stock paper. Size each piece to fit on top of the buttons.

Be careful– don’t make your shims too thick or the buttons will be super stiff. Place the buttons in the neck and lay the shims directly on top.

To reassemble, follow the above steps in reverse order. I highly recommend testing the spacers before closing the neck up– place the rubber spacer and the circuit board on, but don’t screw it in. Hold it against your hand as you test the button action to make sure it’s what you want.

Now your fret buttons have less travel, and thus respond faster! “Flatter” buttons with a shorter throw make it easier to do slides and trills. This also has the nice side-effect of making them a little quieter, too, if you lubricate the fret buttons with lithium grease as well.