Rick James Stewart

For those of you into the Supercross scene you are well aware of James Stewart Jr., better known as James “Bubba” Stewart, and as seen above, alter ego, “Rick” James Stewart. For those of you not in the know I’m about to school you, Stewart is really the first black supercross athlete who has pretty much dominated just about every race he’s competed in.

Stewart won the 2009 Monster Energy® AMA Supercross, an FIM World Championship, season finale in Las Vegas. On the winner’s stand he was presented  with a one of a kind, custom, Guitar Hero Guitar.

This is about the genius that went into that Guitar Creation (prepare to geek out now).

The following Description by Ben Lewry of Visionary Instruments

Things started with a sandwich of wood glued together to make the body. Lightweight Bass wood was used for the body sides, and an Adler strip was placed in the center to give more strength to the neck joint and electronics mounts.

Next the plastic guitar controller was disassembled and carefully measured to create a virtual model for the computer controlled router.  These components were positioned into a full sized guitar model.  This model was then cut out of the square of wood, using the CNC machine, in order to make the body.

A similar process was done for the Maple neck.  Removing the original buttons and circuitry and creating a cavity for them in the full sized wooden version. I thought about using aftermarket buttons for the controller, but decided that this might change the way the game feels to play.  Without having time to test different styles of switches, I thought it was best to just use the originals.  The down side of this is that I was forced to make the neck slightly thicker than a standard electric guitars’… Perhaps no worry for the guitar hero professional

It was great fun to destroy the warranty and harvest the components from the plastic controller.  The band saw cut that plastic like butter…

Next an aluminum cover plate was cut to protect the electronics. I actually made a plywood template with the CNC router, using the same program I used to make the body.  That template was then traced onto the aluminum and cut out with the band saw and a sanding wheel.  A perfect fit…

Next trick was to duplicate the Guitar Hero buttons in Ebony, and mount them to the neck.  I precisely traced the profile onto the wood and hand routed them with a dremel tool.

These buttons were glued to the ebony and then carefully mounted in the neck.  The wires from the buttons to the circuit board had to be replaced with much longer ribbon cable.

It would have been very easy to assemble the neck by simply gluing it all together.  But I wanted to make the guitar repairable if the buttons ever wore out, so I came up with a special detachable system and hid the screws and joints as close to the frets as possible to give the illusion of a continuous fingerboard.  Then the rest of the frets were installed. This allows the button portion of the fingerboard to be removed easily with just four screws.

With the internal work complete, the neck could be shaped and sanded to it’s final dimension.

Once the neck and body shaping and sanding is completed, I began to work on the finish. Test sprays were done with the adhesive vinyl.  The problem was that the finish did not stick very well to the vinyl, and peeled off easily.  However, when we substituted for poster paper, the ink used to print the graphics began to bleed into the finish.  Fortunately, I had two copies of the printed graphic and was able to find a solution.  I used a spray on oil-based polyurethane which did not pickup the colors off the graphic.  This poly was kept as an intermediary between the lacquer clear coats, and the ink on the paper.  With this new technique I was able to protect the graphic and still spray a high quality clear coat on top of it.  The whole thing was then glued down to the body with 2-ton epoxy and carefully cut to fit the top and components.

Before I sprayed the clear coat lacquor, I added a soft black burst to hide the edges of the graphic.

This gave a beautiful transition into the black on the back and sides of the guitar. Then several coats of clear were sprayed over the next three days. I then took a little break and allowed the lacquor to harden. Lacquor dries in a matter of minits, however it’s not hard enough to sand and buff to a high gloss for over a week.

While the lacquer dries, I powder coated the aluminium cover plates for the back of the guitar. Black powder coating adds a beautiful and durable finish to metal parts.

Once the lacquer was dry, I sanded and buffed out the neck and body. This is easily the most painful part of the process. Sanding and buffing seems to take endless hours and one small mistake can ruin the entire finish. This guitar needed to be ready on time and there was no room for error! It was fun to include the broken warranty sticker on the headstock.

With the sanding and buffing done, it was time to install the hardware. No substitutes were made for quality parts, real Fender tuners were mounted on the headstock to give this guitar the authentic look!

Next the plastic from the original controller was glued into the body and the switches were installed.
Time to start wiring! I took the ribbon cable from the neck and threaded it through a hole in the body. All these wires needed to be reconnected to the circuit board. Then the components were hooked up – whammy bar, four way pad, and star power button. A little grease was added to keep the strum bar from squeaking (a common problem with many of the guitar hero controllers). Without the back cover of the original controller, I needed to create a way for the whammy bar housing to stay in place. Custom aluminum strips were added for this job.

The next problem was to relocate the sync button. An additonal button was added, flush mounted to the rear cover plate, so the controller could be synced to any x-box you like. I made sure to preserve all the original components, if the guitar ever needed to be hard wired to an x-box.

Rewire finally complete…

I added a little personal touch under the battery compartment, just in case someone wondered where this guitar came from.

Finally the finished custom full-sized Guitar Hero controller could rest up before the big game. Fits nicely in it’s case!

Words by Barbie Brady