Something I have been doing since the Wii and 360 days, I find it is a nice subtle way to tell my controllers from my friends when I bring them over for a gaming session

They use 0603 LEDs just like the WiiMotes and 360 controllers so I have plenty left over from those days.

Pretty cool! How hard would this be for a total newb on a scale of 1-10? (I've never swapped out LEDs before)

Awesome mod, and great idea!

Man, those 0603 LEDs are small... I would've done messed everything up with something like that. lol

Regardless of how hard the soldering job is those controllers are not the easiest to disassemble/reassemble :/

Good to know, as I've not tried! I've only taken apart PS1/2/3 controllers before personally.
 

If you had no issue with those it may not be too bad for you. As far as soldering is concerned my advice is to watch a few youtube videos then jump right in. I learned by making a Banana Prince repro. I forget the amount of pins it has but by the time I finished it I was pretty decent. I wish I had more stuff to solder...I think it's pretty fun.

Nice work, looks great!!!

For a beginner I would say practice on something your don't care if you break, I have ripped my fair share of pads in the past.

What I did was use a solder glob to remove the original LEDs then used solder wick to level out the pads. I then added solder to one of the pads and heated it while sliding the LED in place and then I added some solder to the other side of the LED.

My biggest issue with this is that there are some wires soldered to the board and the solder pads are on the back of the board so they are not easy to get to and the motors for the rumble are glued in place and not easy to remove. Because of this I did my soldering near the plastic shell and could not use hot air to remove the original LEDs.

Like StudyHallPanic#@! said watch some videos on YouTube and if you are OK with taking apart the PS1-3 controllers this one should easy for you. Those PS controllers are the ones I hate the most.