Tilt sensor problems? Fix it like this!!

**BriGuy** · Joined: 04 Mar 2006 Posts: 1894 Location: Boston

Hey everyone. I have noticed a lot of people (including myself) with problems with their tilt sensors. Either they are too sensitive and go when you don't want them to, or they are not sensitive enough and you have to hold it straight up and shake the thing to get it to go off. Either way, it is a frustrating way to lose your note streaks and points. I have come up with some relatively easy fixes to all of the commen problems with both types of tilt sensors.

As I have previously noted, there are two different types of sensors. The first kind is a complicated off the board assembly that came with the original GH1 bundle. It consists of a circuit board with 4 ball-bearing-in-a-tube tilt sensors set at different angles and all 4 must trigger to complete the circuit for the star power to activate. If you are have a sometimes unresponsive tilt sensor, it is probably this model. It looks like this:

I have found that this 4 tube design to be a bit overkill and thus when even just 1 of the four gets stuck a little bit, the star power doesn't activate. A solution I have come up with is soldering over 2 of the 4 sensors to make it simpler and more reliable. I decided to solder over the two circled in red (S1 and S4) because they look like they aren't aligned as properly as S1 and S3 when tilted up. This has worked out great for my guitar and I never have a problem anymore.
For those with this design who can't get it to activate at all when tilted, I would first check the wires connected to the circuit boards first, and if they look good, it may be any one of these 4 sensors that may be stuck. You could maybe check each with a multimeter(?) or temporarily connect a wire over each tube one at at time at the copper post spots (circled in blue) If you wire over one of these junctions, and you try it out and the tilt works, open it up and solder over the back of the board like I did circled in red.

The newer tilt sensor was built into the SG only packages and is also in the GH2 red guitar. It is a much simpler version that is built into the main circuit board. It has one black box tilt sensor and is considered to be a LOT more sensitive, because it requires less of an angle to deploy and there is only one circuit to complete activate your star power. It looks like this:

.................................................................................................................................TOO FAR (half as far is good!)

As proposed by Netonex, this black box can be bent a little to make it less sensitive. You have to remove a bit of glue and very gently bend it in the direction in the 2nd pic. The position that is shown was where I bent it before testing. I found this to bee TOO FAR and I bent mine back a bit to probably half that much. If it's bent more than that, it makes deploying the star power difficult and will actually get in the way of the strum bar. Also, try not to bend it back and forth too much. There are 4 posts to this box and you don't want to break any of them.

Thats about it guys, good luck with your tilt mods!!

**Mastermind73** · Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 220 Location: Kansas City, MO

Thanks for the fix! I hold my guitar at too high of an angle when playing and since THAT's not going to be changing any time soon, this mod really helped with the issue.

BTW I used the newer model mod on my red SG that shipped with GH2.

**Astat** · Joined: 28 Dec 2006 Posts: 282 Location: St. Cloud, MN

Hmm, my red SG has the problem that the tilt sensor is actually not sensitive enough! It seems to work better when I'm playing GH2 than when I'm playing GH1. Totally illogical, but I swear it happens. I'll play GH2 and it'll activate just fine, but I'll pop in GH1 and sure enough, I'll tilt the damn thing completely vertical and NOTHING happens. It sometimes takes me 2-3 tries to get SP to go off. I've opened the thing up and checked the little black box, and it's perfectly straight as it's supposed to be, nothing appears to be wrong with it.
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**fubar247** · Joined: 17 Feb 2007 Posts: 34 Location: Nova Scotia, Canada

I have the opposite happen, I just started playing part one (I know, I know) Everything works as it should for part two, but part one seems 300% more sensitive, sometimes triggering for no apparent reason (vibration from stumming is enough to do it).
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**joji416** · Joined: 01 Mar 2007 Posts: 11

i have a psyclone hammer guitar and i have a hard time getting star power and tips?

**porkchop** · Joined: 07 Apr 2007 Posts: 151

i have the nyko frontman wireless and have tilt problems too where you almost have to stop playing and shake the hell out of it to make it activate. when i opened it i didnt see that little box in there. does someone have a picture of the sensor on the nyko or just how to fix
thanks

**simey** · Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 5:08 pm Post subject:

**p41** · Joined: 27 Jul 2006 Posts: 439 Location: Boston, MA

I have the red SG guitar and opened it up and turned that SP-tilt sensor box a tiny bit (like the pic above shows) and now SP doesn't work AT ALL by tilting. I've fixed things in my old guitar before, so not sure what happened on this one...

I am not upset though, my tilt sensor was so damn sensitive that it would pretty much just auto activate every time I got SP. My original black SG didn't have that issue.

I'm kinda glad my tilt SP doesn't even work now... it will force me to be more accurate with my activations using the select button.
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**simey** · Posted: Sat Dec 15, 2007 5:42 pm Post subject:

The same thing happened to my Red SG a little while ago
Im starting to use the select button and if i can get used to it, i'll be glad that it broke. but no one else will.

any fix though?

**BriGuy** · Joined: 04 Mar 2006 Posts: 1894 Location: Boston

**simey** · Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2007 8:31 pm Post subject:

I found that adjusting it a tad too far can make SP totally inactive by tilting.

However if the sensor is adjusted back then it should work. Just a tip if you think your red SG is broken.

Thanks, Simey

**Ghozer** · Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2007 2:07 am Post subject:

Or, you could just use your palm and press the SELECT button, that activates star power too you know ;)
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**xtremeshredder** · Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2007 8:28 pm Post subject:

**CapnSpanky** · Joined: 08 Jul 2007 Posts: 76 Location: Bay Area, CA

Does this fix work for the Les Paul guitar as well?

If so, If I just... removed the sensor... per se, would it completely take away the tilt function of the guitar? I don't use it anyway.
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**genesim** · Joined: 28 Feb 2008 Posts: 1

I just had to bump this up.

Ok I have a Kramer for PS2 which alot of people report problems with, and it looks ver similar to the second situation. So I tried just bending the ball type tilt switch box with no luck.

It either went NON RESPONSIVE or TOO SENSITIVE.

I couldn't understand how there was no inbetween until I discovered this piece of plastic that hinders the box from beting tilted. It fits snugly against the tilt box, which would be good if it was calibrated for each and every individual!!!! So to cutomize you must first do what I did...BREAK IT OFF. That way, it won't either go back to the same position or completely clear the plastic after you tighten the circuit board. Instead it will make the tilt box be able to bend wherever you like. It reminded me of the light in the fridge going off...I couldn't see it once I pulled back the board...nope..still bent....nope...still straight....nope still bent.....etc. etc.

In the picture I already started to break the plastic off, which is why it looks that way. I thought I should take a picture before I snapped it completely off. Be careful, but trust me the damage is minimal, and it doesn't matter to the rest of the guitar.

Afterwards the bend modification mentioned above worked fine!

Thx for the info that was first posted. Star Power perfectly through the Kramer baby!!