As soon as I found out that the Guitar Hero III controller had a removable faceplate I’ve wanted to customize it. Not just the stickers that come with the controller, cool as they may be, but a real paint job.

The first thing I needed to to was remove the stickers that are on the faceplate. Goo Gone is great for this and will save you a lot of headaches when removing anything adhesive. If you have never used Goo Gone before here is a tip. If you can, peel away as much of the sticker as you can manually, before you put the stuff on. When you are left with just glue or some fuzzy paper stuck down soak the area with Goo Gone and let it sit a few minutes before you try to scrape it off. I used a small scrap of PVC pipe as a scrapper.

Once you have any stickers removed you are left with a glossy mirror finish on your faceplate. One issue that came to mind was that glossy smooth surfaces are not easy for paint to cling to. I’ve taken some 200 grit sand paper and very lightly scuffed up the surface to give it some ‘tooth’ for the paint to adhere to. Many who use spray paint don’t do more than apply one or multiple coats of paint.

One of the tricks to getting a really good finish on anything you are spray painting is to scuff the paint slightly between coats of paint. It sounds crazy but this is what happens with paint. You put a light first coat on and let it dry. Once it’s dry hit it lightly with a very very fine sandpaper. All you want to do is scuff up the surface a bit so the next coat has some ‘tooth’ to grab and many paints will meld with the previous coat and give you a MUCH smoother finish than if you just sprayed multiple coats without scuffing.

After my third coat, with mild scuffing with fine sandpaper between coats, I achieved an almost mirror finish. I’m going to put some sort of graphic symbol over the whole red background and a layer or two of clear coat to seal it up. Once that’s on I’ll update the page with the final photos.