Mod Kits Can Bring Old Gear Back to Life, Better than Ever

Sometimes, it’s possible to go beyond repair, and improve on the original. People have been customizing their gear for years, whether it’s putting new pickups into a guitar, swapping an SSD into the hard-drive bay of an ancient laptop, or—and this one make me feel a little nauseous—decorating their gaming PC with LEDs to make it look like the world’s dorkiest Christmas tree.

More recently, mod kits and detailed mod guides have made it easier than ever to tweak your gadgets, often without much major surgery. Equipped with some basic tools, a soldering iron, and the right kit, guide, or YouTube video, you’re in for some serious fun.

GameCube Bluetooth Controller Mod

Let’s start easy. 8BitDo’s new Bluetooth mod kit turns an old, original wired GameCube controller into a Bluetooth controller that you can use with a Switch, or other computer. It’s a great way to use one of Nintendo’s classic controllers to play the GameCube games available on the Switch. Nintendo already sells modern versions of its Nintendo 64, SNES, and NES controllers, and even a Sega Megadrive/Genesis controller, but not the GameCube.

The mod is dead easy. Once you have opened up the controller, the kit is a straight drop-in replacement for the original circuit board. There’s a video guide on the product page, but the gist is that you also have to remove the various components inside the unit and connect them to the new board.

Mostly that consists of releasing and re-plugging connectors, but for the vibrating rumble motor you have to get your hands a little dirtier. You have to cut the wires, strip the tips, then twist them to connect them to the new circuit board. The kit comes with a couple of heat-shrink tubes to help make this more secure, but given how much punishment a controller can take, I’d solder these in place to be sure. And I would do it with the new iFixit Smart Soldering Iron.

The kit also includes improved Hall-effect joysticks, to eliminate future joystick drift. And speaking of which, you might want to take a look at our Nintendo Switch Joy-Con Hall-effect joystick kit, which will banish joystick drift forever.

GuliKit Hall-Effect Sensors for Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons

Tired of stick drift? Replace your drifting joysticks with these Hall-effect sensor kit.

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Other Nintendo Mods

The regular Switch comes in LED and OLED versions, but you can add an improved OLED screen to the Switch Lite if you like, with, yes, a mod kit. Depending on the version you choose, you may have to forego touch input, or use the existing digitizer panel, or just buy a new shell with most of the work done for you.

Another fun mod kit is the NES Hub, which adds wireless controller support to the original NES, which is pretty wild. It’s so cool to see such old gear being brought back to useful life by enthusiast makers. There’s even an optional dongle that lets you connect SNES controllers.

FixHub | Power Series Portable Soldering Station

The FixHub Portable Soldering Station gives you the power of a benchtop setup, anywhere you need it—without compromising performance. Whether you're in the workshop or out in the field, you're always ready to fix.

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DIY

Mod kits are great. They often come with the tools you need to complete the repair or mod, and are generally made to be easy. They’re also an excellent gateway drug for first-timers, showing people that it’s totally possible to open up their gadgets and poke around inside without killing them.

But how about some more advanced DIY mods? I mentioned one of my favorites above—replacing an old laptop spinning hard drive with an SSD for an instant and startlingly huge upgrade in speed. But a laptop isn’t the only portable that can benefit from an SSD. How about modding an iPod?

The iPod might still have the best interface just for browsing and listening to music, and it’s still supported on modern Macs—you just manage it through the Finder now instead of in iTunes.

But what an iPod doesn’t have is all modern conveniences of your phone, or current MP3 players. Thanks to a lively modding scene, though, you can add Bluetooth, USB-C, replace the SSD, and of course switch in a new battery.

The SSD probably makes the most sense as a beginner project, and it can be pretty simple. The physical swap itself is straightforward. The trickiest part might be flashing the iPod operating system onto the new drive. But once done, you’ll have silent operation, more storage, and the SSD will use less power, and be immune to damage from drops and bumps. You can even opt for an SSD for music storage, up to 1TB.

One mod I like is this solderless Bluetooth kit with USB-C for the iPod Classic, which replaces the entire rear case of the iPod classic with a plastic case that already contains the Bluetooth and USB-C parts. It’s plastic, because the original polished-steel back will block Bluetooth, and the kit even leaves the original 30-pin Dock Connector intact and working, for use with any old-school speakers or retro hotel alarm clocks you might want to use.

Then there are the kinds of mods where you’re desperate, and anything will do as long as it gets the job done. One of my first ever electronics mods was the power socket on my G3 (white) iBook broke. I couldn’t afford the replacement part (yes, I think that you could actually buy parts back then), so I grabbed an audio phono cable, cut it in two, and soldered one side to the iBook’s circuit board, and one to the power supply. It worked for years, and it was far from the only thing I had to do to keep that computer running. But that’s a story for another day.

In short, modding is not only fun, and accessible to anyone, from beginner to rocket surgeon. It’s also great practice for repair, and you can end up with some truly unique designs that would never be made otherwise—sometimes a lot better than the originals, or the commercial alternatives. Try it.