Rock Band instruments not proving durable, medic!customer adventures, music, gaming — by TDavid @ 8:23 am PST
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Of all the praises I’ve heaped on the game Rock Band lately, durability of the instruments has been a common, recurring complaint from others. Yesterday, we suffered our first major Rock Band disaster:
The drum pedal snapped clean in half right down the middle where the spring attaches as pictured above. There is clearly too much tension in the middle without adequate support. They should have had a piece of medal running through the center for reinforcement.
Good thing we bought the extended warranty.
Temporary solution so the jam does not end?
A little glue and Gorilla or duct tape. May not look pretty but as long as the plastic feet can be pushed against the sensor, it still works.
Oddly, I found that not having the pressure of the spring as pronounced with the wraparound tape made the bandaged pedal a little easier to play. With a real drum pedal you can adjust tension whereas with the plastic RB pedal it’s one setting fits — or rather doesnt fit — all.
Ouch, guitar problems too
Also, the Rock Band guitar strum switch is not registering strums accurately (no, it’s not a calibration problem with the TV). We went out and bought another Guitar Hero II controller and have been using that instead.
Considering we only made it through three weeks of gameplay without instrument issues, I’m going to join the chorus of boos in the Rock Band instrument durability department. Prediction: Harmonix is going to see a lot of returns/exchanges. We’re going to wait until after the holidays to exchange ours for a new package as there aren’t a lot of these packages out there currently.
This also opens up a market for third parties to step in with more heavy duty equipment. How about a metal drum pedal? We’ve probably logged less than 40 hours of play time before having issues which is unacceptable after paying $170.
Before anybody starts bashing about us playing too hard, the drumset at the Harmonix booth at PAX (Penny Arcade Expo) was also broken. Harmonix had to know this was an issue in testing and they decided not to do anything about reinforcing the pedal? Bummer. The game is still great, it’s just the gear that is suspect. Buy the extended warranty.
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I’ve heard of lots of pedal problems and kinda makes me not wanna toss out $170 for RockBand but just can’t help it. We are hoping for RockBand for my family but me and the wife haven’t been able to find it in stores yet. At least your temp tape up allows you to still play. Does suck to spend that much money on a bundle with cheap easily breakable pieces. Would be nice to get a statement from them on replacing them or at least when they will have new ones in store.
Comment by James Fleeting — December 16, 2007 @ 8:42 am PST
Hi James - EA is replacing the pedals directly but they want to charge $125 holding fee (ridiculous if true) until they receive the broken pedal back.
We bought ours from Best Buy with their extended warranty ($29.99) and they told us we could just return the whole package and swap it out, which we plan to do after the holidays since the guitar is also having issues.
Also, it looks like there are already a number of creative solutions out there. One guy used a real drum pedal and a block of wood with this hack.
On eBay another person is selling a durable medal reinforcement that screws into the existing RB pedal for $14.99. This looks like a good option.
Comment by TDavid — December 16, 2007 @ 8:57 am PST
To James, it’s definitely still worth the $170 price tag. I do think the testers probably concentrated on playtesting the game rather than the equipment however, when they should have been equally focused on each.
My only equipment failure was a GH2 guitar, when playing GH3. The strummer broke off the guitar entirely. But I do admit I was rocking out pretty hard.
Comment by Kevin — December 18, 2007 @ 12:05 am PST
[…] instrument issues and the $170 price tag, Rock Band is selling very well, as is Guitar Hero according to the […]
Pingback by Guitar music game genre a hit this holiday season and what makes a game of the year » Make You Go Hmm — December 18, 2007 @ 10:26 am PST
Argh, I had a Rock Band malfunction, my friend was getting a little too hyper with the drum set and he broke 3 out of 4 to the point that you have to hit them with a hammer for anything to register on the game. Drums were my favorite too…
Comment by Heather — December 19, 2007 @ 10:18 pm PST
I hope that they strengthen the instruments for a PAL release but I highly doubt it. Despite this I’m still very interested in picking up this game. The price is the only thing that is holding me back from commiting to a future purchase. And its PAL so its going to be even more expensive than the American version(despite the strength of the Australian dollar).
Comment by Daniel Primed — December 20, 2007 @ 3:37 am PST
This guy is selling the pedals for cheap on ebay. cheapest i’ve seen. He says it doesn’t void the warranty either. http://cgi.ebay.com/Rock-Band-Bass-Pedal-Reinforcement-Fixes-broken-pedal_W0QQitemZ280186034692QQihZ018QQcategoryZ122517QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Comment by Daniel Ayers — December 21, 2007 @ 4:04 pm PST
[…] exchanged our broken Rock Band package at the local Best Buy today. Hoping this one makes it more than a month before breaking down. Rock […]
Pingback by Using exclusive Rock Band songs to sell magazines and more » Make You Go Hmm — January 20, 2008 @ 4:44 pm PST
We had the same problems with the bass drum pedal, we broke it 3 times in a month. I boutght a aluminum replacement pedal from a guy who makes them at his machine shop, and it completely cured the breaking pedal problem. It has a more realistic feel than the lightweigt plastic pedal as well. This is the link to the craigs list posting
http://detroit.craigslist.org/for/664907338.html
The owner of the shop said there are a lot of companies making repair pedals (see ebay) that screw to the top of the broken pedal with self tapping screws but that thier replacement pedal is a much better solution, we agree. It even has foam rubber pads for cusion and grip when you are playing with bare feet or socks. And a lifetime warranty against pedal breakage. Excellent product!
Comment by Tom Freidman — May 3, 2008 @ 11:53 am PST
Although this would break the warranty, we had the same issues with the guitar, and instead of dishing out all that money for a brand new one, we simply opened it up and cleaned out the dust around the sensor. Also, my fiance adjusted the wires so they wouldn’t break again.
Would you believe the inside is hot glued? You pay all that money, and they’re just wanting it to break. It’s ridiculous.
Luckily, we’re both technicians, so we were able to take care of it.
The dusting really took care of the guitar.
Comment by Christina — July 11, 2008 @ 4:37 am PST
[…] drum pedal — that has failed more than twice per year. We’re on drum set #3 since our first purchase November 2007, and I’m hoping Rock Band 2 drum kit which comes out soon will be more durable and have a […]
Pingback by 6 Xbox 360 dead in 30 months, our first Xbox Elite dies » Make You Go Hmm — August 17, 2008 @ 10:17 am PST