Harmonix Admits Early Rock Band Guitars Flawed

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Confirming what many gamers had already discovered and what was supposedly being addressed in a day-one patch for the game, Harmonix has admitted on the Rock Band forums that some of the bundled Rock Band (PS2, PS3, X360) guitars have faulty strum bars.

"As sometimes happens when new products first go into manufacturing, we discovered an imperfection with the strum bar in an early production run of guitars that were shipped at launch," a Harmonix employee wrote. "We've since identified and fixed the issue in all subsequent production runs of the guitars."

Harmonix went on to apologize for the mistake, and advises any gamers with faulty guitars to make use of the Rock Band support website to receive a quick replacement. Multiple members of the Shack staff can attest to both quick and easy service using the Rock Band replacement program.

From The Chatty
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    November 28, 2007 1:33 PM

    To the Shack staff whose guitars were busted, in what way were they defective? I think my strum bar is fine except it's a little squishy, but I figured that's just how it was. How can I tell?

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      November 28, 2007 1:34 PM

      My strum bar was really sporadic. Out of four downstrums, it would recognize maybe two.

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        November 28, 2007 1:57 PM

        I have this exact thing. So do several of my friends.

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      November 28, 2007 1:35 PM

      They're all (disappointingly) squishy. If it doesn't register notes, or it registers two strums for every time you flick it, you're in trouble.

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      November 28, 2007 1:35 PM

      If your strum bar is not registering all of your strums then you know it is defective.

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      November 28, 2007 1:46 PM

      Down strumming stops responding, sometimes it's intermittent, sometimes totally. The easiest way to be sure that it's happening it to play a section with just down strumming and then play a section with just upstrumming. It because so obvious on my guitar that I didn't need to do this eventually, but at first it wasn't quite so pronounced.

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      November 28, 2007 1:52 PM

      The first night of playing my strum bar went from working to not registering downstrums. The 1-day patch fixed it for a time, and then mine bar started to register double hits for each downstrum.

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      November 28, 2007 1:58 PM

      [deleted]

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        November 28, 2007 4:23 PM

        I posted about this on launch with the guitar comments thread, and a couple other people confirmed - all of our guitars seem to have that loose 'gutter' in the middle. I don't really like it, but hopefully it's intended.

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      November 28, 2007 2:05 PM

      Pretty much figured this was the case. Thanksgiving day, we were rocking out most of the afternoon while the turkeys got dizzy in the Rotisseries. I was sticking mostly to the Strat and was having no problem with the songs on hard. As the day progresses, I start missing more and more notes much to my agitation. At first I thought the timing was off, so I re-calibrated. After that, I was doing fine again, but the x-plorer being used for bass was way off now.

      Eventually its goose was cooked, and it refused to register a down strum 2/3 of the time, so it was quickly replaced with another x-plorer. Good news is that the replacement process is easy. Pretty much a no questions asked system. You answer 2-3 questions and they have you pick a shipping options. Bad news is that you have to create an account with EA. I expect my replacement to arrive sometime day since I chose the express shipping option.

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      November 28, 2007 3:05 PM

      My tilt sensor was busted, so no overdrive by tilting the guitar. Still waiting for the replacement...

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      November 29, 2007 11:28 AM

      downstrum no longer works. actually, i guess it'd be upstrum for right handers since i play it lefty. i opened up the guitar and fixed it.

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