Year One: Building Custom Clone Hero Controllers and a Community I Never Expected
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April 10, 2025 – April 10, 2026
From a $500 leap of faith to 200+ units sold and a community I never saw coming — the honest story of year one.
01 — It started with a guitar that hurt to play.
In December 2024, I picked up a Rock Band 1 set to get back into the game. I was excited — this is a hobby I genuinely love, and I was ready to dive back in. But it didn't take long to realize the guitar wasn't going to work for me. The fretting caused real pain if I played for more than an hour. The strum bar felt mushy, unresponsive, disconnected from the music.
So I did what anyone would do: I bought a mod kit from another seller. It worked as advertised. It just wasn't what I was looking for. I switched to Guitar Hero-style guitars, tried a kit from a different seller. Same story — mostly worked as intended, but the performance wasn't there. Two kits in, I was still searching for something that didn't seem to exist yet.
That's when I stopped looking for someone else's answer and started asking my own questions. How does all of this actually work? What would it take to build something better? I started learning 3D design. Then PCB design. I built prototypes, tore them apart, started over, and built again. Slowly, something started to take shape — and I realized I might be onto something worth sharing with the people who felt the same frustration I did.
My wife and I agreed on a $500 startup budget. With that, I sourced 8 guitars, 10 PCBs, and outsourced my first round of 3D prints. The plan, to the extent there was one, was simple: try it out. See if the community wanted it. Figure out the rest as we went.
02 — Further than I ever expected to go.
When I started, I thought I might sell a couple of units a month. A hobby with some upside. I was still moving slowly, navigating the health challenges I deal with on a daily basis. I'd done my research, I saw genuine interest in the niche, but I honestly wasn't sure of the scale. I didn't know if I was building a small side project or something real.
One year later: 200+ units sold. 0% return rate. One builder. $500 to start.
The interest from the community blew every projection I had out of the water. I'm still a little blown away by it, honestly. Not just the volume — but the zero returns. Every single one of those 200+ units went out the door and stayed with its new owner. That's not luck. That's a standard I hold myself to, and I'm proud of it.
03 — The skill that surprised me most.
Building this business from the ground up meant teaching myself things I had no background in whatsoever. 3D design. PCB design. E-commerce. All of it, self-taught, figured out in real time while trying to keep up with orders and run a business simultaneously.
PCB design was the one that surprised me most. From the outside, it always seemed like this daunting, gatekept skill — something reserved for people with engineering degrees and decades of experience. The reality was completely different. It makes more sense to me than almost anything else I've picked up. And the resources available today are extraordinary. If you're willing to sit with it and actually learn, it's more accessible than the mystique around it suggests.
That said — learning means making mistakes. My first PCB batch had the switch spacing wrong on the strum board. They didn't even come close to fitting. Not a single one made it into a production guitar. It was a painful lesson, but an important one: measure five times, sleep on it, measure again, then send it to be manufactured.
"I have grown as a self-taught engineer, as a businessman, and frankly as a person. The skill sets are plural."
That last part is the one I keep coming back to. A year ago I was someone who built guitars in his spare time. Today I'm someone who designs the components inside them, manages a supply chain, runs an affiliate program, and ships products weekly. I didn't set out to become all of those things. I just kept showing up and figuring out what the next problem needed.
04 — The moments that made it real.
There were three moments this year where I felt the community truly embrace what I was building. Each one hit differently, and together they're the reason I'm still going.
The first was back in July. A customer in my state reached out through Facebook Marketplace — just someone looking for a guitar. We instantly connected. He helped me get more plugged into the broader player community, introduced me to people, made me feel less like a vendor and more like a member of something. It sounds small. It wasn't.
The second was when LeftyGod reached out about giving me a shoutout on his stream. LeftyGod is a well-respected pro player in the Clone Hero community — someone whose opinion carries real weight. I went into that conversation expecting a sponsorship pitch. He wanted to do it for free. I ended up sponsoring him anyway because I wanted to support what he does, and I'm genuinely grateful for that friendship. The fact that someone at his level saw what I was building and wanted to be a part of it — that meant more than I can really articulate.
And then there was April 10th. My one-year anniversary stream. I wanted to give back to the community that made all of this possible, so I ran giveaways — two kits, my way of saying thank you. What I wasn't prepared for was what happened next. The community gave back harder than I gave. Gift subs. Bits. An outpouring of support that I genuinely didn't see coming.
"I was choking up. I unsuccessfully held back some tears. Absolutely amazing people out there."
Here's the thing about that moment that matters most to me: I struggle to leave home most days. Building community in the traditional, in-person sense isn't something that's easily available to me. The Clone Hero community — the people who show up on stream, who buy these guitars, who send messages and leave reviews — they've become my people in a way I didn't know I was missing. What happened in that stream was proof of that in the most unexpected, overwhelming way.
And for the record: all Twitch revenue goes back into giveaways. That's always been the plan. They gave me something real. The least I can do is keep giving back.
05 — What I'd tell myself on day one.
If I could go back to April 10th, 2025 and say one thing to the version of me standing in the garage with 8 guitars, 10 PCBs, and a $500 budget, it would be this:
"Never doubt your gifts and the impact they can make on the world. When you set out to use them and do the right thing — to just be a good person — everything falls into place."
What I'm most proud of from this year isn't a sales number. It isn't the zero returns or the affiliate program or the product launches. Those things matter, but they're not the core of it.
What I'm most proud of is the feeling of being able to contribute to the broader scope of the world again. Not just monetarily — but to have a community to support, to get to know personally, to show up for. That's what this was always really about, even when I didn't have the words for it yet.
06 — Year two starts now.
On the product side, the roadmap is clear: complete the mainline Guitar Hero controller Revamp Kit lineup, then move into more niche and custom territory. There's a lot of ground left to cover, and I'm more excited about what's ahead than I've been at any point in the past year.
The bigger goal for year two is scale without sacrifice. That means bringing in help for the physically taxing parts of the workflow — controller cleaning, order packing, the stuff that takes time and energy away from what I do best. The more of that I can hand off to the right people, the more guitars I can build, and the more products I can develop. Same quality standards. More capacity. Better outcomes for everyone.
And on a personal note, I'm committing to something I should have been doing all along: a dedicated day off each week. Running a one-person business while managing my health is a real balancing act — rest isn't optional, it's infrastructure. The community deserves a builder who's taking care of himself, and I'm going to make sure that happens.
To everyone who bought a guitar, left a review, watched a stream, sent a message, or just shared something I made with a friend: thank you. Year one was yours as much as it was mine. I can't wait to see what we build in year two.
— Ajax · Ajax Custom Guitars, LLC