Great design, unforgivable implementation.
I'm in a tough spot. I loathe the design of the Rockband guitars - the strum bars feel too stiff, the buttons are loud, the guitar is terrible at sensing when you raise it vertical for star power. That leaves the guitar hero guitars as a backup. Fortunately, the Les Paul frets, strum bar and star power accelerometer all work exactly as they should. I like precision when I'm playing, so I like to hear the click from the strum bar and a super-fast reset back to the neutral position so you can strum again. In short, when the les paul is working, it is *perfect.*
The problem is, the guitar is never really working properly. This is mostly due to some really terrible design decisions. The neck detatches (presumably for easy transport), and as such there is another set of contacts between the neck and body. Turns out they really screwed up the design of this section and most people's guitar neck and bodies tend to separate and lose contact with eachother. This leads to buttons not working properly.
To make matters worse, Activision and Red Octane's return system is a travesty compared to EA's and rockband. When something in RB breaks(and believe me, it does. Often.), I can go to the EA website, tell them it is broken and within about 2 minutes, they are sending me a replacement drum set or guitar or kick pedal, as well as a prepaid box to send back the broken instrument.
When I tried to replace my les paul after the red and blue buttons stopped working after *two weeks* I had to send them an email which took a few days to get a response on, then it was MY responsibility to send them their defective product, then I got to wait 4-6 weeks while they deduce that it is, indeed, broken, then they sent me a refurbished one back. Oh, and the only reason I even got this pathetic level of service was because my guitar was still under 90-day warranty.
p.s., The replacement guitar also stopped picking up the green button after about 10 days. I ended up unhooking and repositioning the circuitboard/contact plate on the neck of the guitar myself, and it was upgraded from "unplayable" to "merely irritating."
Weak.
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