Alan wrote in to tell us about Open Chord, an open hardware conversion kit that lets you play Rock Band and similar games using a real guitar. We’ve seen no shortage of DIY rock band guitar mods, however his uses the actual strings on the guitar, rather than adding extra buttons for each note. I’m not a guitarist, however it seems like this could be a fun way to practice fingerings. You could hook it up to an advanced version of Frets on Fire, and you have yourself a Mavis-Beacon style guitar tutor, or even convert it to output MIDI, and use it to play your favorite synth.
More:
I made something similar last year, but switched out the guitar pick with boxing gloves
It’s quite an easy analog hack to do actually, I have a walkthrough with pictures on my site:
http://pappmaskin.no/2009/10/diy-play-rock-band-2-with-a-real-guitar-and-boxing-gloves/
Enjoy!