It's kinda funny: I popped RB2 in my PS3 for the first time on Sunday -- even though I really needed to sit down and write a review for DVD Talk -- and figured I'd just play a couple of songs. I finally stopped four and a half hours later. I decided I'd just put that review off until Monday, when...oops! Another four hour session. I managed to limit myself to just an hour and a half yesterday when I really did make myself write at least something.

This afternoon, I got GHWT in the mail, and even finishing two gigs was like a trip to the dentist's office. The drums are borderline-worthless. Even after doing the "tape fix", far too many of my hits fail to register. (I played "Dammit" on hard on the GHWT drums and scored around 70K. I played the same song on the Rock Band drums and scored over 100K.) It's a drag because the pads feel perfect, and I love the concept of the raised cymbals. The tape fix seemed to work perfectly for the crash -- which I couldn't get to register at all beforehand -- but the snare is still ridiculously unreliable. Something may be too sensitive now because sometimes I'll trigger star power without even attempting to hit both cymbals. The interface does such a poor job of letting me know what I'm hitting (or missing) that I don't ever really know what, if anything, I'm doing wrong. When I screw up on Rock Band, I can tell...I can just feel it...but I can't with GHWT.

The interface is terrible, the information I want to see is kind of obscured, I hate being so severely limited in what I can play and when, attempting to type in anything is nightmarish...

It's as if GHWT and RB2 have the same father, but GH's mommy was a lush who kept stumbling down the stairs over and over again. If I could drop-kick this out the window and get my money back, I would.

I almost hated to see the drums go back, if only because, as you said, the pads are so perfect. I just wish the cymbals weren't utter crap. I would consider buying the drums when they are offered standalone if they work out this crap.

The tape fix worked pretty well for me. My orange symbal is working much better now, but it isn't perfect. Red Octane is sending me the cable, so I will try that fix.

Just finished the setlist.

Yes, pretty much everything about Guitar Hero is inferior to RB (except for stats...but wow...the setlist of songs makes your eyes hurt), but taking out the doubles, I really enjoyed the GH tracklist. It is more "epic" than RB and even though I love both, this will be nice to have access to...

Hot Blooded, Jessie's Girl, and Death Magnetic are all a blast to play so I will continue to get GHWT DLC as long as it is exclusive (at the time) and fun.

I also appreciated GHWT not forcing horrible girl vocal songs on the disc. That made the setlist have a lot less crap.

I just downloaded and tried out the drum tuning program Activision released. I have my own USB to MIDI box so I didn't have to wait for one from them.

I think it's going to help with my kit. Right now the default sensitivity is 10, on a scale of 0 to 20. I went into the Music Creator screen as they instruct to see how many notes were coming across, and instead of dropping notes, I saw I was triggering extra notes which was blowing my streaks. Basically my snare hand might let the stick barely bounce against the pad after the main hit, and it would register. I knocked it down to 7 and so far so good. Then I noticed the same thing with kick so I knocked that down to 6, and haven't produced any duplicates yet. I'm hoping this is all I need to do.

This explains why the RB kit does so much better - less sensitivity and less bounce back from the pads.

Still doesn't excuse the crappy guitar buttons I have, but I can deal with exchanging that since I have my RB guitars around to use.

Well its great to know this fix works.

Why they did not build this into the game as a setting or setup feature is really really poor design. But then again there are a lot of poor design choices they made in WT. Maybe they will get it together in WT:2.

How do we go about getting the cable?

Wait until bunkaroo leaves the house for work in the morning, then sneak in through the back. Yoink!

I'm assuming they send you one after you call and complain?

edit:

I don't think I'll be dropping another 200 dollars to find out. Fool me once you can go fuck yourself!

Apparently you can just request it and they will send it to you free of charge.

I think you can start here:

http://redoctane.custhelp.com/cgi-bi...i=&p_topview=1

LOL it would probably be more like 3 yoinks. The cable they'll send is much easier. I have a multi-MIDI interface on my recording PC, then I had to attach a MIDI cable, etc. I had the benefit of working with this kind of stuff a lot. I would not expect the average non-computer savvy person to be able to pull this off with anything but an "all-in-one" cable.

Maybe I should advertise on Craigslist - GH:WT drum tuning - only $10 a pad!

I have a key, thanks.

Have to agree here. USB certainly allows for 2-way communication, so I can only guess they did not design the wireless part of the kit to receive data, but who knows. I guess we should consider ourselves luck there's even a MIDI in.

Funny thing is, with a little time and effort I could use the MIDI in to play songs in Career mode. I have sequencing software and the MIDI notes are public knowledge, so one would basically just have to know the map notes from each song and program them accordingly.

Probably a lot of work just to get 5-star perfect on Expert, but if I ever see anyone with those stats I'd have to wonder if they cheated it like this.

She told me she made you give it back. Dammit!

:lol:

Not only that but even with a key I still get to sneak in through the back.

I have been totally demoralized. Take all my toys.

:lol: It's like a Friday in here. What's going on? Thursday starts the weekend!

No Rain and the REM pack are up on the marketplace. No Rain looks decent on guitar. Though I am looking forward to singing it the most.



Can't wait to get home from work.

I'm really curious to know how many people got fired over this whole ordeal. I mean there's not a doubt in anyone's mind that this problem is hurting sales right? And when it comes to losing money people (I.E bosses) are never happy! It's not a question of rock band fanboys crapping on everything Guitar Hero related anymore, now it's actually alienating FANS of the GH series! And this pisses me off because I'm one of those fans! Personally i prefer GH3 over RB1 and i've been playing alot of RB2 on my ps3 since i bought it 2 weeks ago and while i think it's very good i personally like the GH WT setlist more. But i still love both and want to play both (i still don't get the fanboyism with those two franchises, just play both damnit. it's more songs!)
And i still have the RB1 drums and i can't STAND the loudness of them so that's why i wanted the GH drumset so i could finally play drums without bothering everyone else in the house!
So i know whoever answers my question will be pure speculation but does anyone know when we might see some new shipments of FIXED drums and guitars? So i can finally get it. I've been waiting half a year for this game and now i have to wait some more because some idiots couldn't test their shit before sending them out. GRRR!

No Rain! Been waiting for that one to come out since Sunday. :D

They are fixing them now. If your kit fails then you will either get a tuner kit, or replacement depending on the issue.

Honestly of the thousands of kits out there you are only seeing a small vocal minority here and on the internet. The odds are you are going to get a good kit in working order.

Well, a replacement if you mail them the original kit on your own dime and don't mind having your game mothballed for a full month. When will I get the tuner kit? Why wasn't this built into the game in the first place?

The odds were apparently stacked against me.

Even if, say, 70% of the kits out there are perfectly fine, that's an abysmal failure rate. It's gross incompetence on the part of Activision/RedOctane. I've seen the same complaints too many times from too many people to believe this is a rare, isolated set of incidents.

I REALLY want to get GHWT but the only reviews/posts I am seeing are from people with faulty kits. Can those with perfectly working kits give me some feedback on how this game is?

I want to put Ted Nugent in a Stranglehold for that boring, shitty, never-ending song of his. :mad:


I love the Nuge, don't get me wrong, and I actually like Stranglehold -- the song -- but Stranglehold the GH:WT track makes me so mad it's like full pigeon genocide time.

I tend to think though for every person you read here or on another forum with a problem there are many more who have the same issues and won't report it or won't post on forums. I think the drum issue is probably more widespread than it appears right now. Otherwise I doubt they would have been so quick to address it publicly if it was just a vocal minority.