Guitar Strap Gamepad

By Sean Michael Ragan
Category: Music, Fun & Games
Time Required: 20 minutes
Difficulty: Easy

If you’re playing Rocksmith (and I think you should be), and you’re playing standing up (ditto), you have probably run into the "where do I put the controller" problem. The gamepad is required to navigate the menu system between songs, and if you play in a standing position you have to keep a stool or a table nearby to keep it within easy reach.

This simple mod mounts a spring steel clip to the underside of a standard Xbox 360 controller so you can attach it to your guitar strap. In this position, it is easily accessed with your strumming hand.

The steel clip I’m using is a common replacement visor clip for several models of garage door remote. A belt clip fitting, such as Tandy Leather’s 1238-00, should work just as well. The clip is secured to the Xbox battery holder in two ways: first with a short bolt that engages a small hex nut and lockwasher inside the battery holder, and second with a strip of double-sided foam tape that keeps it from rotating about the single bolt.

This mod does not affect normal controller operation in any way. The battery holder can still be removed and the batteries changed normally. In this position, the steel clip is inconspicuous and does not interfere with a normal gameplay grip, nor, significantly, with the controller’s resting attitude on a flat surface.

Steps

Step #1: Drill one small hole

Remove the battery pack from your controller and take the batteries out.
Drill a 1/8" hole in the underside of the battery pack, as shown, from the inside.
There's a small circular molding mark on the inside of the battery pack cover, at the top, right in the middle. Aim to put your hole right in the middle of this circle, but don't fret if it's not exactly right. It doesn't need to be.

Conclusion

I was first a bit leery about attaching the clip just to the battery holder, because I was concerned that the battery holder latch wasn't up to the task of bearing the controller's entire weight as I moved around. In practice, this has not proved to be a problem.

If it does, eventually, there's a variation of this mod that drills the hole in the battery pack slightly lower, and all the way through both sides. The short machine bolt and nut is replaced with a 1.25" #4 wood screw that goes all the way through the battery pack and engages the "hidden" case assembly screw hole under the bar-code in the controller main body. A #4 screw passes cleanly between the batteries inside the battery holder, and is close enough in size to the factory case screw to effectively replace it.

This more aggressive mod secures both clip and battery pack firmly to the controller main body, but requires removing the screw to change the batteries. So far it has not proved to be necessary, and I don't expect that it will.