Broken Plastic Instruments

I know, it's been a WHILE since I last blogged here, mostly because I had little to write about. Today I do.  
  
       I've been a long time fan of the Guitar Hero franchise, even after Neversoft took the reigns back in 2007. I've bought nearly every console game in the franchise, save for Smash Hits, even after the colossal dissapointment of World Tour. While a lot of people have complained (and rightfully so) that the series has become garbage due to the countless spin-offs and lack of good DLC support, I couldn't help myself from buying the latest installment in the series. Some people may call me a fool for doing so. Some people are probably right. 
 
    But it isn't the missteps of the franchise that I'm bitching about today, but the plastic instruments we use to play them. I currently have five plastic guitars in my possession. Four of them are from the Guitar Hero series, while the fifth is from the original Rock Band game. Four of those guitars broke in some way or another, long after the warranty expired. My X-Plorer just flat out stopped connecting to my console, my Les Paul's green button is shoddy even with the many fixes I've tried, my World Tour guitar has a dysfunctional yellow button, and my second World Tour guitar (the first was out of warranty...I had to buy a new one) overstrummed at random during songs. The original Rock Band one? Well, that one works completely fine.  
 
     I don't even know why I put so much money into those things, I should've learned my lesson after the Les Paul broke, but I did it anyway. I bought the World Tour guitar bundle for $100 at launch, it was one of my worst purchases ever in my opinion. The game was junk, and while I thought the guitar was among the best controllers I've ever used, it eventually shit the bed like all of the others before it. Then I bought a full band WT bundle from Wal-Mart for $100 about two weeks ago. The guitar overstrummed constantly and the red pad on the drum kit just stopped working. Enraged, I brought it back to Wal Mart yesterday and got a new unit, expecting it to work for at least a while. 
 
Nope. 
 
    I set up the kit this morning, started playing some GH5, looking for a song that'll test out the pads and pedal to see if it's in working order. I chose Sonic Youth's "Incinerate" (bad song btw) and found that the foot pedal didn't register half the time. Luckily I had a second one lying around and used that. It seemed to work generally well, but I still felt I was missing the occassional note when I shouldn't have. I don't think it'll last long. I suspect the Guitar is dysfunctional too, but I haven't tried it out yet. 
 
     Needless to say, I'm never buying another Red Octane peripheral (or maybe even a GH game) ever again. It should be noted that my Rock Band peripherals, now almost two years old, are still in perfect working order. What's funny is that I initially thought these were the inferior peripherals. Oh, how wrong I was. 
  
    I guess all that's left to do is send an e-mail to Red Octane explaining my disatisfaction with their instruments. It won't be angry, as I hate angry and bitchy customers possibly more than anyone in the world, but rather wreak of dissapointment and regret, and sometimes, that's even worse to read. 

"Those rock band 2 guitars look very nice, i should get one. Ive never had a broken guitar, but my cousin had his GH3 guitar break about 3 days after purchase. "

" @Mikemcn said:

"Those rock band 2 guitars look very nice, i should get one. Ive never had a broken guitar, but my cousin had his GH3 guitar break about 3 days after purchase. "

Yeah, my only gripe with the RB1 guitar is that the strum bar doesn't click. "

Did you ever bother to google this? Because there has been a free tuning kit since pretty much the release which allows you to tune the sensitivity of the drums, my orange used to work completely shit, having to have to smash it really hard for it to register, and now it works absolutely fine. The tuning itself is dead easy, you get send a cable for the pc, you download the program and basically all you have to do is press + for more sensitivity and - for less.

My Guitar Hero controllers are pretty much crap for the most part. The GH3 Les Paul had two faulty buttons and the GH:WT one had mushy buttons, but I think that may be the model itself. Get the Rock Band 2 guitar. Seriously. It has great buttons and a responsive strum bar. Plus, the auto-calibration feature is a godsend if you have a flat-screen TV hooked up. Get it; it is not that expensive now and worth it unlike most of the other peripherals.

If you ask me, the Rock Band 2 guitars work very nicely. Granite, they may not work with Guitar Hero, but who knows? Maybe it's time for you to make the switch.

As a competitive RB/GH player I've definetly had my fair share of broken instruments.
 Have Broken 3 drums sets, until finally buying Goodwoods, which then broke and had to get them replaced.
Kick Pedal for drums broke.
Rock Band Guitar Broke
Les Paul Broke
Now I have another Les Paul hopefully it will hold out. 
 
Yeah there's no really getting around it, your shit will break eventually. You just kind of have to accept it.

"Did you ever bother to google this? Because there has been a free tuning kit since pretty much the release which allows you to tune the sensitivity of the drums, my orange used to work completely shit, having to have to smash it really hard for it to register, and now it works absolutely fine. The tuning itself is dead easy, you get send a cable for the pc, you download the program and basically all you have to do is press + for more sensitivity and - for less. "

My GH3 Les Paul still magically works fine, and it's right from its the October release, I just need to tighten the neck a bit or the sustain notes drop. It's amazing, because I've wailed on that thing like crazy too.
 
 
Drums on the other hand, I've gone through 3 regular sets and a rb2 set. I found out later that I could connect my electronic kit to the game through a little modding.

Since about six months ago, I used my GH3 Les Paul for everything, because the strum bar made a nice click, and it was wireless. About a year ago, it stopped giving me an audible downstum - it just pushed down, but still clicked up. A few months later, I had to press a lot harder for a few of the buttons, and the strums weren't registering sometimes.
 
I switched over to the wired GH2 Explorer, which worked fine for a while, but the same strumming problem happened, so I switched over to my other Explorer (I got for free from a Gamestop promotion). I've been using that for a couple months now, 
 
My Rock Band 1 Stratocaster had some problems, but I got it replaced. My Rock Band 1 Drums are a little wonky, but I plan on getting new ones eventually.

" I chose Sonic Youth's "Incinerate" (bad song btw)"
 

I've had trouble with both Guitar Hero and Rock Band instruments. I've had two Les Pauls and two RB1 strats flake out on me. Plus my first RB1 drum set never really worked 100% right, but EA/Harmonix was pretty good about replacing stuff. They replaced my RB1 drums waaay after the fact which was totally awesome and friendly. Which is pretty much the opposite of Red Octane/Activision support which requires receipts and shit. Thankfully my GH2 explorer is still going strong, even after my half-hearted yet savage attempts to destroy it.

" @Everyones_A_Critic: My x-plorer had the same problem, but I fixed it by swapping the end of the wire (the bit that converts the circle input to usb) with one of my controllers, and when I pushed it in really hard (I know it sounds silly pushing it in when it feels like it won't go in any further, but for whatever reason it worked) the guitar suddenly burst into life. plus, my controller seems to work fine with the guitars end. I think it's just they come a bit lose or something, so even if you haven't got a controller to swap it with, try pushing the part of the wire where the two ends meet (about 5cm down from where it plugs into the xbox if you still don't know what bit I'm on about) and see if that helps. "

yes, i have had my guitars break. i only bought gh1 and 2, i didn't think there should be others. i find it that the needle things break or something so the buttons don't register. sometimes they wrok while other times they don't.

I have owned 10 guitars now and three of them have stopped working. Only three I consider to be in perfect working order, though. My GHWT guitar and my PS2 GH1 and 2 guitars. Having gone through a Rock Band drum kit on both the PS3 and the 360 and having a DOA GHWT drum kit that neither Activision nor K Mart would take back (basically putting me out $200) I flat out refuse to play Music game drums ever again. It's a real pain and it is VERY expensive. There are now only 2 Guitars and no drums kits set up in my room and it's staying that way.