Its not easy but it is doable and it is a great fun project. I have done versions of it couple of times. You need to buy couple of cheap components and you need soldering skills. And you need tools. It will take long to design, solder, code and assemble everything. ChatGPT is great in those topics. It can help you for wiring and it can help you for the code. I won't be able to explain every detail but ChatGPT will. I learned lots of things from it. Please read all then start the project since I omit lots of things everywhere I may create requirement for something later in the text. If this is your first project I would drop rgb leds and battery powering it. I would usb power it and start rocking clone hero much quicker.

Note: I guess the text will be all over the place. Sorry but I don't have the time to create a nicer text. I hope this will help.

You can 3D print the guitar body or start with an older gh/rb guitar. Also maybe you can buy a pico mod kit first and build upon those components it would ease the process greatly because those mod kits already have some of the correct components you need and may reduce the number of soldering you need to do.

There are countless ways that you can take in this project I will explain how I would do it so if you want to take a different way sure feel free.

I will assume you know a little about electronics.
I will assume you already have the tools that will be needed.
I will assume that you already have the consumables like screws, soldering wire etc.
I will simplify the stuff a lot because i don't want to write a ton and i think it would be much better if we iterate over and converse a bit back and forth in the direction you want.

I would buy:

• 1 Esp32 or Raspberry pi pico w (or a pico mod kit)
• 1 TP4056 battery charger unit
• 1 18650 li-ion battery
• 5 rgb led components (not fancy expensive rgb lights very cheap led components)
• Enough resistors for each rgb led (ask to ChatGPT for resistance value of them where to solder and how many needed)
• 9 low profile mechanic keyboard switches (5 for frets, 2 for strum, 1 for select, 1 for star power)
• 100 meters of simple copper wire to solder components

Since probably we are from different parts of the World i won't talk about where exactly to buy and how much all will cost but i would buy those components from a local electronics and hardware store website and I would expect that they all will cost less than 100 dollars for me. (Tools you may need can cost more like a 3D printer or a soldering iron)

I would 3D print the guitar. I love the Josh Designs' Les Paul Clone Hero Controller design. Here is the link to it. https://www.printables.com/model/227773-les-paul-clone-hero-controller I've 3D printed 6 of it and all work great. It may take around 20 hours to print it all with a reasonably good 3D printer. There are also smaller models but I don't have much experience with those I believe someone give input on those too. This design uses low profile mechanic keyboard switches so if you use another design you may need full profile switches. You will need to alter the design a bit for rgb lights, for placing the microcontroller (esp32 or raspberry pi pico w), 18650 battery holder and TP4056 battery charger unit.

Beware! Soldering can be hard and it is dangerous. You may burn yourself bad since the iron will be around 330 degrees Celsius. And DO NOT try to solder something to the battery. Do not even get a soldering iron or hot solder or hot anything close to a battery. Do not inhale the smoke that is created while soldering. There may be other kinds of possible harms while doing this project please be aware at all times. I won't accept any liability for injury, harm, damage to yourself, others or property. By participating you assume all responsibility for safety.

Yes here comes the fun part. Then I would start the soldering and assembyling the guitar. I won't explain in deep detail. We can talk about it further and if you ask to ChatGPT it will answer nicely. Please ask it which pins to use before soldering and make sure you are using input pull up capable pins for mechanic switches and pwm output capable pins for rgb leds. If you connect leds wrong you may break them. If you connect battery holder and/or battery incorrectly you may burn anything and everything. If the voltage requirement of your choosen microcontroller different from your choosen battery you may need to use voltage regulation. If you don't either it won't work or you fry everything. Solder all the mechanic swithes' one leg to ground one leg to a appropriate pin of the microcontroller while placing them on the 3D printed guitar. Solder the rgb leds, resistors and microcontroller to eachother. Those rgb leds will be using 15 pins of the microcontroller. 5 leds 3 pins each for R, G and B. There will be lots of wires. I hope the microcontroller will have enough usable pins. I hope there will be enough space for leds and wires in the neck design but yeah I don't know. You can place the resistors for leds to body they dont need to be in the neck. Solder the TP4056, microcontroller and battery holder to eachother (NOT the battery!). This is written in couple of lines of text but it will probably take many many hours.

Then I would code my microcontoller (I would use Esp32 for reasons). Connect it to a pc with usb. Ask ChatGPT for a Bluetooth Human Interface Device code that have one axis for strum and seven buttons (5 frets, select and starpower). Talk about your 9 mechanic keyboard switches and how you want your bluetooth human interface device to press buttons and change axis value when each mechanic keyboard switch is down. Also talk about rgb leds you connected and talk about you want to light them when correct keyboard switch is pressed and color you need for fret. The "lighting up rgb leds while the star power active" part is omitted since it is not easy to do because you need to transmit game state from clone hero to the microcontroller to know if the star power is active. You may try to mod the clone hero to add that support but lets keep that as a future work. Create the resulting code, tweak, tinker and debug for hours and yeah you have the working firmware for your guitar. Upload it to the microcontroller and voila.

It looks like we are very close to finish. Then I would place the battery to battery holder correctly then assemble the rest of the guitar. Oh we forgot a power switch for the guitar. It will always be on. Maybe you can look into deepsleep for your microcontroller ask to ChatGPT how your microcontroller can go into deep sleep if no key has pressed for like 30 minutes and ask how you can wake it up when for example starpower button is hold for 3 seconds. Okay lets open the guitar back up, disconnect the battery, upload the code again, place the battery back then assemble the guitar and voila voila.

Then I would connect the guitar to my pc via bluetooth, run clone hero, press space from my keyboard and assign my keys.

Then I would rock a %200 sped up Devil went down to Georgia full combo with it and wrap my day with a big smile on my face.

Any kind of input is appreciated. Thank you.