360 Rock Band guitar

[Ponyone]

Just got rock band today, and have a question.

Are the buttons supposed to be that clicky sounding (more so than the GHIII one) and is the strum bar supposed to be "mushy" ?

It's hard to hit a series of fast notes with it it's soo mush mush.

[norkusa]

Yeah, unfortunately it is supposed to be like that. At least thats how mine is.

I don't mind playing with the Strat but it's impossible to play with on Expert. Those fret buttons are way too clunky to hit the fast notes with. I just use my Les Paul as my main Rock Band guitar and use the Strat as a secondary whenever a friend comes over to play.

[Ponyone]

Okay, as long as I didn't get a defect.

I sing anyway, so whoever the guitarist is can suffer through it.

[icbrkr]

I use my GH2 guitar for lead guitar on Rock Band because of this. I give anyone who's playing bass the mushy Rock Band one :/

[geneshifter]

Same experience here with the Rock Band guitar: it sucks. Really, it's horrible for actually playing anything fast. Get the GH3 guitar since it's so much better.

[Chuplayer]

I just got the game disc only yesterday and only used the RB guitar briefly at Best Buy, but... Xplorer FTW. I love that guitar. I've been having a blast with RB with the Xplorer, and I don't care if I ever get the official RB one.

[Rev. Link]

Wow. Folks, I really don't mean to sound like an ass here, but you all must kinda suck at Rock Band.

Aside from the annoying loudness of the clicky fret buttons, I find the RB guitar to be superior in pretty much every way. The GH guitars feel like cheap plastic toys now in comparison. Plus, the Les Paul has that whole stupid thing where the neck detaches. Makes the thing feel flimsy to me.

Of course, they all play just fine, but to me the Stratacaster just feels soooo much better.

[norkusa]

Wow. Folks, I really don't mean to sound like an ass here, but you all must kinda suck at Rock Band.

Aside from the annoying loudness of the clicky fret buttons, I find the RB guitar to be superior in pretty much every way. The GH guitars feel like cheap plastic toys now in comparison. Plus, the Les Paul has that whole stupid thing where the neck detaches. Makes the thing feel flimsy to me.

Of course, they all play just fine, but to me the Stratacaster just feels soooo much better.

We suck at Rock Band because our scores improve when we play with a GH controller? Yeah, that makes sense.

If I didn't buy GHIII new with the Les Paul controller and assemble it myself, I wouldn't even notice that the neck detaches from the body. Feels sturdy just like Xplorer and SG guitars.

[Ponyone]

Unrelated but sassy note... when you're battling online with someone and you're both singing.. you can't hear eachother singing? What's the point?

[carlcarlson]

Yeah the strat sucks, I can't understand how anyone can say otherwise. It feels like a piece of junk in your hands, and the buttons and strum bar are horrible. Unfortunately I don't care much for the Xplorer either because it seems to be too sensitive (I play with a pick and get kickbacks). I'm hoping the Les Paul is more like the original SG, I never had any problems with either of the ones I have.

[Lerxstnj]

The cheaper switches break very often on the RB guitars. You can mod the guitar with better switches. Here is a video tutorial...

http://www.hak5.org/archives/196#more-196

[geneshifter]

Wow. Folks, I really don't mean to sound like an ass here, but you all must kinda suck at Rock Band.

Aside from the annoying loudness of the clicky fret buttons, I find the RB guitar to be superior in pretty much every way. The GH guitars feel like cheap plastic toys now in comparison. Plus, the Les Paul has that whole stupid thing where the neck detaches. Makes the thing feel flimsy to me.

Of course, they all play just fine, but to me the Stratacaster just feels soooo much better.

You're nuts and WAY off base. A lot of us have played GH1 and 2 to death and this RB guitar absolutely blows in comparison. Maybe you haven't noticed since you haven't played a song beyond easy yet LOL.

[64Bits]

You're nuts and WAY off base. A lot of us have played GH1 and 2 to death and this RB guitar absolutely blows in comparison. Maybe you haven't noticed since you haven't played a song beyond easy yet LOL.

Pshaw, rhythm games are for nerds and gays anyways.

[iamchris]

As a person who plays bass, I have to disagree about the mushiness of the strum bar. the guitar hero strum bars snaps back too hard, making notes that you didnt mean happen.

If you pluck like I do, its actually a huge improvement. But I can see where the rest of you are coming from.

[Rev. Link]

You're nuts and WAY off base. A lot of us have played GH1 and 2 to death and this RB guitar absolutely blows in comparison. Maybe you haven't noticed since you haven't played a song beyond easy yet LOL.

That's pretty immature now, isn't it? Did I stumble into GameFAQs by mistake?

Believe me, bub, I've been playing Guitar Hero since the original. I've played them both to death myself (still haven't bought III, but I've played it) and can handle most every song just fine on expert. I've also played a lot of Rock Band. After playing RB, I was upset that the Stratacaster couldn't be used in GHIII.

The Strat is more realistically sized, it's more solid, the strum bar doesn't have that annoying click, and the fret buttons feel more real. Also, as a lefty, I was very pleased to see that the strap knob could be moved and the wammy bar was in a more central location.

Now, I admit, since the fret buttons are sunk into the neck instead of protruing out of it, it did take a bit of getting used to. But this just made the Strat feel more like a real guitar. And guess what? I got used to it just fine. So maybe I misspoke when I said you guys suck at RB, and should have said that you kinda suck at using the Strat.

[norkusa]

So maybe I misspoke when I said you guys suck at RB, and should have said that you kinda suck at using the Strat.

Or maybe you're just full of shit? I checked your Rock Band achievements and you've only got 4 of 50. And they're all easy ones that you'd get from playing the game after 10 minutes. And you don't even have the 100% notes in an expert song achievement either, which isn't even that hard to do.

So get back to us when you start playing some songs on Expert, k?

[64Bits]

Or maybe you're just full of shit? I checked your Rock Band achievements and you've only got 4 of 50. And they're all easy ones that you'd get from playing the game after 10 minutes. And you don't even have the 100% notes in an expert song achievement either, which isn't even that hard to do.

So get back to us when you start playing some songs on Expert, k?

Nevermind. Just.....Nevermind.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

Without throwing any allegiance to any personal opinion of any poster or poster(s) in this thread, I'd just like to throw my two cents in on the quality of engineering on the Red Octane Guitar Hero guitars vs the Harmonix Rock Band Guitar.

I've been playing since the 1st title in the series on PS2, I own the original Black PS2 Gibson, and used it with great success (and occasional frustration via "touchy" fret buttons) on Guitar Hero 1, 2, and Rocks the 80's.

I jumped ship to XBOX 360 for Guitar Hero III with the wireless les paul (and I also re-purchased Guitar Hero II this time for 360 and downloaded the GH I packs).

Finally, like most guitar game enthusiasts, I received Rock Band for the holidays (from my wonderful, beautiful GF - thanks babe) and, having played all four variations of the genre with three of the major variations in guitar design, I feel it's safe for me to make an assessment of the hardware.

The original Guitar Hero Gibson controller, which is packed in with Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero 2 for PS2 is a wonderful bit of design and engineering, but with any first effort, there comes minor flaws, and while I never found the guitar itself to be "flimsy" in terms of it's light weight and balance, I did feel that the fret buttons were the most prone to not standing the test of time out of any model. After years of loving abuse, on mine, they sometimes fail to register being "held down" for long notes. Could just be a straight up hardware failure isolated to my guitar ... but I'm betting that they improved on that with subsequent models. The "clicky" strum bar feature is still my favorite, and I feel lends to the most effective playing of "hard" and "expert" songs as it not only acts as an audible "metronome" of sorts for players, but is a subtle physical cue that the strum "went through".

The Gibson XPlorer model that was packed in with the XBOX 360 version of GH II is IMO slightly larger, heavier, and feels more "sturdy" in terms of fret button resistance. My only gripe with that unit is it's propensity for getting FILTHY on any white area of it's plastic (check out the mountain of used ones at any Game Stop) ... and it's generally ugly body design ... but that's Gibson's fault more than Microsoft's or Harmonix/Red Octane's.

The Wireless Les Paul that came packed in with GH III is my absolute favorite of the Guitar Hero batch. I STRONGLY disagree with any sentiment that it "feels" "flimsy" or "cheap" ... I completely feel that this model is the pinnacle of design for all Guitar Hero gaming. The fret buttons are absolutely perfect in their size, placement and "action / resistance", and the accuracy of the guitar overall has allowed me to gold 5 star songs that I doubt I'd ever have done with the standard GH or XPlorer models. Moving forward, I don't see myself investing in any other Guitar releases for 360, as the Les Paul 100% meets my personal needs, and I never feel like any errors made with it are anything other than "operator" based.

So, now then.

The Rock Band Guitar.

Barring the fact that mine (like so many people's) broke (strum bar) after 5 days of standard usage, I still think that overall it's a decent FIRST EFFORT from Harmonix and EA. Conceptually, there are some interesting/good ideas like high frets and "recessed/flat" fret keys (I'm not sure if I'd stick the effects switch into the "good" idea category, but I guess it's un-obtrusive at the very least) ... however there are plenty of things about the guitar that like some have noted here make the unit feel "clunky".

The unit's larger size in comparison to the Guitar Hero guitars, versus it's weight tends to create a feeling of "flimsiness" (and initial hardware failure aside, I see no evidence that it's any MORE flimsy than any GH guitar). The flat/recessed fret keys have a MUCH larger surface-area than GH fret keys, and they require a larger finger stretch to hit Green and Orange semi-simultaneously in the center of the frets (hard to explain, but it's there) ... making hard/expert play more difficult to "learn/train" than on Guitar Hero. Also, I've found that that proximity of the Fender's flat frets to each other seems to cause a greater amount of error-based fret-hitting when one can't judge how close their fingers are to the EDGE of any given fret.

The strum bar's "silence" is a whole other bag of worms ... as I pointed out, to some Guitar Hero faithfuls, the clicky strum not only serves as a satisfying "indication" of a correctly strummed note, but in some cases can serve as a personal timing indicator. The lack of noise emanating from the Rock Band strum bar eliminates this nearly completely (there is still a bit of ambient noise , but hardly any) ... I can see why this design was chosen, as the clicking noise does tend to overpower the audio from the game if it's not cranked ... but, if that's the case, well, the Rock Band drums take over that position of "drowning out" the on-screen music with their ultra-loud "tappity tappity" sounds.

With my repaired/replaced Rock Band guitar which came in the mail in January, I haven't had any issues with further strum bar failure, and I've been using it for well over a month and a half, nearly daily since it came in ... so, any initial hardware issues only seem to be a one-time failure issue.

The short-short is, I don't dislike the Rock Band guitar over-all, but I do think it has first-time-hardware issues that need to be worked out in future revisions. If I had to choose, I'd certainly pick the Les Paul above any incarnation of any US released guitar game guitar.

[DJ Daishi]

You're nuts and WAY off base. A lot of us have played GH1 and 2 to death and this RB guitar absolutely blows in comparison. Maybe you haven't noticed since you haven't played a song beyond easy yet LOL.

I think the GHII controller is the best one so far

[Rev. Link]

Or maybe you're just full of shit? I checked your Rock Band achievements and you've only got 4 of 50. And they're all easy ones that you'd get from playing the game after 10 minutes. And you don't even have the 100% notes in an expert song achievement either, which isn't even that hard to do.

So get back to us when you start playing some songs on Expert, k?

I'm not getting dragged into some stupid flame war here, so I'll just say this. You don't have any clue what kind of experience I have playing any game. Achievement points are not a measuring stick for that sort of thing. It just so happens that the vast majority of the times I've played Rock Band were out with friends, playing multiplayer with no access to my gamertag. I've barely played any of the solo career at home. So think about stuff like that before you go running your mouth, telling people on the internet that they're full of shit. I thought this place was supposed to be better than that.