Although the Guitar Hero World Tour Guitar is my current fake plastic axe of choice, there have been some issues with it. Besides the analog touchpad, which can be effectively ignored (and even disabled completely within the Guitar Hero: World Tour game options), the main problem people had with the GHWTar is that the strumbar tends to malfunction. That is, you’ll see double-strumming (over-strumming) or failing to register up or down strums.

Well, it finally happened to me — my own GHWTar began double strumming intermittently! Fortunately, there is a fix, as long documented on the ScoreHero forums by superGOAT.

Some guitar batches have faulty strum switches, so let’s replace these stock switches …

… with Radio Shack SPDT submini level switch model #275-016. They are $2.99 each.

You’ll need these items to perform the fix:

1. Two (2) #275-016 Radio Shack replacement switches
2. T-10 Torx screwdriver
3. Small philips screwdriver
4. Soldering iron
5. Pliers

Unscrew the body of the guitar, crack open the body shell, and locate the strumboard. It’s held in by 4 screws, so unscrew those and pull it off. Then desolder the existing switches from the three contact points on the strumboard — six in all — and resolder the new switches in.

The new switches are exactly the same size and shape as the old ones, so it is a perfect drop-in replacement.

I just performed this surgery on my two GHWTars, and it’s pretty easy. The hardest part, honestly, is desoldering the existing switches. I recommend using a pair of pliers to grab the switch on the narrow ends from the bottom. The pliers will hold the strum plate in place while you solder from the top with your other hand. Wiggle the strumboard up and away as you heat up the solder. Yes, it does help to have a “third hand” here; I braced the pliers against my stomach instead.

I did not need to use any new solder. Simply loosening the solder and wiggle-pulling the switches out left more than enough solder in place to secure the new switches.

If you need more detail, Josh Straub has an awesome walkthrough of the strum replacement procedure from start to finish. In fact, Josh has some really excellent walkthroughs of a bunch of useful fake plastic instrument mods, and I highly recommend checking them all out. Please note these are all specific to the Guitar Hero: World Tour Guitar, though:

1. Loose whammy repair guide
2. Broken whammy repair guide
3. Strum bar tightening guide

And for the Guitar Hero: World Tour drum kit –

1. Drum sensitivity repair guide (but you should request your free, official MIDI tuning kit from Red Octane, first!)
2. Fix collapsing drum kit stand legs

Although I don’t play Guitar Hero: World Tour much for reasons I’ve described before, I still dabble every now and then, and I like to use the real 6-input GH:WT drums for GH:WT drum charts because of the weird 5-input Rock Band drum mapping. That collapsing drum legs fix is exactly what I was looking for. My GH:WT drumkit lists to the left like a drunken sailor after every song.. looks like I’ll be headed to the hardware store tomorrow to pick up a cotter pin!

Remember the Mad Catz Precision Bass?

Well, its wireless (and significantly improved) cousin arrives soon — in three different colors — for $89.99. The first one had some definite issues (most troubling were reports of poor strumbar accuracy), so perhaps this second iteration will be the one that’s worth getting.

Based upon the critically acclaimed Mad Catz Fender Precision Bass, the all-new model arrives on Xbox 360 as Mad Catz’s first licensed wireless accessory for the Xbox 360. Connecting directly to the console without a need for a USB dongle, the internal technology is the same as that used in Microsoft® controllers. The new model features a host of new innovations designed to further enhance game play. The premium Fret Buttons have been redesigned to allow for quieter operation and now feature a quick recoil action for faster game play. The Mad Catz Split Strum Bar has been further refined to replicate both the up and down fret bar movements, essentially allowing for faster strumming than ever before. As before, both the Fret Buttons and updated Split Strum Bar have been stress tested and playtested to ensure that it is possible to achieve 100% in ’Expert Mode’ should the player’s abilities be up to the challenge! With a choice of White, ’Hot Rod Red’ and ’Sea Foam Green’ colors, gamers can now choose a Bass to match their style. .

Mad Catz is also, like Logitech, getting into the ultra premium wooden guitar replica business. At $299, their stratocaster replica ain’t cheap, but I must admit the metallic candy apple red version (not pictured) is mighty tempting.

A precise wooden replica of the legendary Fender Stratocaster and a world first on Xbox 360, the Wireless Wooden Fender Stratocaster Guitar controller from Mad Catz brings gamers closer to the authentic guitar experience. Produced in conjunction with Fender, the replica Stratocaster is fashioned from the same premium wood and fittings used in the genuine guitar and is manufactured at the Fender factory to ensure identical sizing, authentic design and premium finish. Finished in a choice of ‘Three-Tone Sunburst’ or Metallic ‘Candy Apple Red’ designs, the Replica Stratocaster features stunning looks and will become a must-have for any true Rock Band connoisseur. Connecting directly to the console without a need for a USB dongle, the internal technology is the same as that used in Microsoft® controllers. The replica Stratocaster sports the same hardware as a real Stratocaster, including real tuning keys, bridge, tremolo, dials and ¼ inch amp jack. Playtested and compatible with Rock Band and Rock Band 2 as well as other rhythm and music titles, the Wireless Wooden Fender Stratocaster Replica Guitar will be highly sought after by fans and collectors alike.

Getting out of the ultra-premium price realm and back to something resembling reality, they will also introduce $99 premium wooden Telecasters. These look remarkably nice for the price — and are also wireless.

A startling replica of the iconic Fender Telecaster, the Player’s Edition guitar delivers the must-have look and cutting edge technology for every style conscious Rock Band enthusiast. Connecting directly to the console without a need for a USB dongle, the internal technology is the same as that used in Microsoft controllers. Sporting a stunning road-worn ,distressed finish and strap, and available in either ’Sunburst’ or ’Butterscotch’ designs, the Telecaster Player’s Edition features premium ultra fast action Fret Buttons allowing gamers to play at expert speeds with ease. Overdrive activation has been simplified and can now be accessed by using the unique ’Touch Sense Button’ which effortlessly responds to the players touch and removes the need to tilt the guitar. The Mad Catz new premium Strum Bar allows gamers to shred notes like never before while the all-new Bigsby® Whammy Plate allows gamers to bend notes in style!

It’s not commonly known, but all Rock Band Stratocaster guitars have a port for pedal-based overdrive activation. Just check the side of your strat; it’s there. It even works with spare Rock Band drum kick pedals, if you add an extension cord! I’ve heard rumors that you can use a regular guitar sustain pedal with adapter, as well. But if you want an off-the-shelf, authentic looking solution, Mad Catz has you covered with their Electro-Harmonix Overdrive Pedal for $29.99.

Designed exclusively for Rock Band 2, the Electro-Harmonix Overdrive Pedal quickly connects to the Rock Band 2 official guitar, the Mad Catz Wireless Wooden Fender Stratocaster Replica or the Mad Catz Wireless Fender Precision Bass Guitar via a 10’ cable. It allows gamers to simply push the pedal’s soft Activation Switch to enter Overdrive during game play, removing the need to tilt the guitar and potentially miss notes or lose focus. Realistically styled, the Overdrive Pedal is fashioned from tough durable metal and provides an authentic way to rock out like the pros!

All this stuff is supposed to become available sometime in September, around the release of The Beatles: Rock Band.

I have mixed feelings about premium and ultra-premium fake plastic guitars.

For one thing, they’re expensive, obviously. But here’s the real problem: if they’re different enough from the default controllers, there’s a risk that you might get used to “your” guitar and have problems playing on standard setups.

Personally, I think you might be better off buying the regular fake plastic guitars (the still-excellent GH3 Les Paul is dirt cheap these days) and learning to mod them a bit for superior performance; scroll to the bottom of this post for my key fake plastic guitar mod recommendations.

The first substantive The Beatles: Rock Band details emerged at E3 last week.

The animated intro sequence:

There’s a fantastic frame-by-frame breakdown of the dozens of Beatles easter eggs in the animated intro. I had no idea!

E3 trailer, featuring lots of gameplay:

The game looks amazing; the customized “dreamscapes” for some of the songs, along with the authentic historical venues, really take the experience to the next level. I’ve often thought a more song-specific experience would accentuate the bigger songs in Rock Band, like a great music video does. That desire appears fully realized in The Beatles: Rock Band!

Also, if you watch closely during the trailer, you’ll see the long rumored feature — up to three-part harmonies!

That’s right, no more relying on the vocalist to carry the song all by his or her lonesome. Better brush up on those singing while playing guitar (or drums) skills! The Wired blog has a great recap of how, specifically, vocal harmonies work in the game:

[Up to] three microphones are counted as a single “player.” On the screen where you select your instrument difficulty level and choose between guitar and bass, you’ll be able to pick either “solo” or “harmonies” for the singer.

If you pick “Solo,” it’ll just have one line, for the lead vocals. If you choose “Harmonies,” up to three lines will be shown at once: blue for the lead, and orange/brown for the two harmony parts.

Sounds difficult, right? Here’s the helpful catch: You don’t need to decide who sings what part. If you want, everyone can sing the lead vocals. Hitting the harmonies is additive, not punitive; if you sing two distinct parts, you’ll get a “Double Fab!” score for that phrase, and if you sing all three you’ll get the coveted “Triple Fab!” Anyone can sing any part they wish.

As you might imagine, some songs are easier to sing in harmony. The easiest would be something like “Octopus’ Garden” or “Back In The U.S.S.R.,” in which the parts are totally separate — somebody can sing the melody while somebody else takes the lies beneath the ocean waaaaaves part, for example.

Slightly more difficult, but still easy to fudge, is “I Feel Fine,” or other such earlier songs where the harmonies follow a pretty standard formula and are easy to pick out of the mix. Where it gets tough is “Day Tripper,” which has very strange close harmonies — I sang it quite a few times but wasn’t able to pick out more than a few of them on the fly.

How about scoring? When the song is done, you can switch between a simple view of the score and a more complex one. The simple view combines all scores into one and shows you how well the whole group did — if at least one person hit each note, then you’ll get 100%. (This happened a lot.) If you flip to the breakdown, it’ll show you what percentage of each of the three color-coded parts each person hit.

Some additional details on the enhanced vocal gameplay from GameSpy’s Sal “sluggo” Accardo, who played it live at E3:

• You can plug all your mics into any USB hub, including the ones bundled with previous Rock Band games.
• Just about any USB mic should work; Harmonix specifically mentioned support for the mics from Lips on the x360 and Singstar on the PS3.
• All the harmonies are mashed into one vocal track; That’s where all the scoring is done.
• When playing as a band, you can turn harmony tracking on or off, so if you only have one singer, you can shut the feature off completely and it’ll look like normal Rock Band.
• It doesn’t matter who sings into what mic. I could sing lead on one phrase, you could sing lead on the next, and the game will give you credit. It basically mixes all the mic inputs into one audio feed and if the right notes are present, you get credit. It doesn’t seem to care what mic the notes come from.
• Instead of the vocal “pie,” there’s now three little bars on top of each other that fill up as each part is successfully completed.
• Harmonies are tracked as kind of a bonus score. At the end of the song, you’ll see a % for how much of the lead vocal was successfully sung, and then bonuses for completing two-part and three-part harmonies.
• All vocals are locked into one difficulty. If the vocalist picks Expert, all the harmonies are Expert as well.
• The special edition bundle will include a mic stand.

In practice, this means you can have up to 6 “players” now: a drummer, guitarist, bassist, and 3 people singing. That bodes well for parties, and c’mon: who doesn’t know pretty much every Beatles song by heart?

Another small, but significant change: no more drum fills during overdrive activation sequences. Notice how the drum overdrive only occupies the green cymbal slot now.

I suppose this was to better preserve the integrity of the music. Fine by me. I’ve never been a big fan of random drum fills in the middle of songs, anyway.

Harmonix also announced that the album Abbey Road, in its entirety, will be available as DLC for the game upon release. Presumably more Beatles tracks will be released as DLC later. And to nobody’s surprise (well, I’m not surprised, anyway), DLC will not be compatible between Rock Band 2 and The Beatles: Rock Band. They are totally different games.

The game looks better than I could have possibly hoped. While I’ll probably take a pass on the special Beatles fake plastic rock hardware, I’m all over the game — and I’ll probably invest in a copy of Lips to get two wireless microphones.

I previously talked about Harmonix’ upcoming portable iteration of Rock Band, Rock Band Unplugged for the PSP. But Guitar Hero went portable first, with Guitar Hero: On Tour for the Nintendo DS.

I am now required by law to show you what may be the cheesiest promo video for a game of all time. It’s so painfully bad, it’s almost good.

If you haven’t seen this, watch it all the way through at least once. Trust me. It’s an … experience.

Anyway, the claim to fame for On Tour is the innovative guitar grip accessory, to give a comparable experience to a real fake plastic guitar in portable form.

The entire game is played sideways, with your hand on the guitar grip and the stylus “pick” strumming the notes.

If it looks awkward, that might be because it is. Some reviews claim that the game is quite uncomfortable to play, due to the way you have to hold the Nintendo DS with the grip attachment.

According to the game’s developer, it took more than 20 prototypes to get On Tour’s unique controller attachment right. Unfortunately, whether or not they got it right is a point of contention. The unit at first seems to fit snuggly into the GBA slot, but it’s possible for it to work itself out in midsong. This brings up an error screen that tells you that you’re rocking too hard. Unfortunately, you can’t just push the unit back in and continue; you’ve got to turn the system off and start the song over. Playing for any length of time can be extremely uncomfortable, and don’t be surprised if you experience lingering pain in your wrist or elbow after the shortest of play sessions. Even playing a single song can be enough to cause discomfort. While the size of your hands is certainly a consideration, the attachment is functional at best. Given that the game actually begins with two screens that instruct you to keep your wrist straight, take frequent breaks to avoid cramping, try different play styles to find one that’s comfortable, and even visit the game’s Web site “for more play comfort suggestions,” it’s apparent that someone was aware that the game could present physical problems for people. It would have been nice to be able to play the game with some sort of alternate control scheme, but such an option isn’t available.

Also, the brand new Nintendo DSi is incompatible with On Tour, as it lacks the GBA cartridge slot that the grip accessory plugs into. So the future of the franchise seems a bit sketchy.

Of course, the DSi is almost fully compatible with every Nintendo DS game ever made, the exception being titles that utilize the secondary slot on the Nintendo DS and the Nintendo DS Lite for add-ons. Games such as Guitar Hero: On Tour, Tony Hawk’s Motion and My Weight Loss Coach will not work on the Nintendo DSi because the new system lacks the slot needed to utilize the peripherals required to play the software.

The games have been hugely successful, though, and there are already two releases, and a third expected within a few weeks.

Guitar Hero On Tour: Modern Hits setlist:

• “Adrenaline” - 12 Stones
• “All My Life” - Foo Fighters
• “Always Where I Need to Be” - The Kooks
• “Call to Arms” - Angels & Airwaves
• “Chelsea Dagger” - The Fratellis
• “Dashboard” - Modest Mouse
• “Dimension” - Wolfmother
• “Do the Panic” - Phantom Planet
• “Everybody Get Dangerous” - Weezer
• “The Fallen” - Franz Ferdinand
• “Falling Down” - Atreyu
• “Half-Truism” - The Offspring
• “I Wanna Be Your Man” - Endeverafter
• “Lassoo” - The Duke Spirit
• “Lights and Sounds” - Yellowcard
• “The Metal” - Tenacious D
• “Miss Murder” - AFI
• “Paralyzer” - Finger Eleven
• “Reptilia” - The Strokes
• “Ruby” - Kaiser Chiefs
• “Shockwave” - Black Tide
• “Still Waiting” - Sum 41
• “Sweet Sacrifice” - Evanescence
• “This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race” - Fall Out Boy
• “Unconditional” - The Bravery
• “Violet Hill” - Coldplay
• “What Do I Have to Do” - The Donnas
• “Where Are We Runnin’?” - Lenny Kravitz

Even if you have no interest in the On Tour franchise, the setlist surely presages some of these songs being released as full-blown Guitar Hero: World Tour or Rock Band DLC — I hope! I know I’d love to get “Youth Gone Wild”, “Jet Airliner”, “I Can’t Drive 55″, “China Grove”, and many others from the On Tour setlist in full-size form!

The upcoming Harmonix title The Beatles: Rock Band, to be released on 9-9-09 (number nine.. number nine..), will include the option to buy three different special edition guitars, all based on well known instruments that the Beatles themselves famously played:

Rickenbacker 325 (Lennon)

Gretsch Duo Jet (Harrison)

Hofner Bass (McCartney)

The only way to get the Hofner bass is to buy the The Beatles: Rock Band Limited Edition band kit, which also includes a special Beatles themed set of Ludwig pearl-finish drums with faux kick head, microphone, and microphone stand. The other two guitars will be sold seperately:

The Rickenbacker 325 and Gretsch Duo Jet guitars are hailed as two of the signature, most celebrated instruments played by John Lennon and George Harrison throughout their careers, respectively. They will be made available for MSRP $99.99. These wireless instrument controllers join the previously announced Höfner bass controller, a large-scale replica of the bass famously used by Sir Paul McCartney, and the Ringo Starr inspired and Ludwig-branded Rock Band 2 drums, with a classic pearl finishand vintage replica Beatles kick drum head.

I’m as big a Beatles fan as the next music enthusiast, but I can’t say I find any of those guitars particularly exciting. While it’s admirable that Harmonix is going to such lengths to provide the ultimate fake plastic Beatles experience, I might bypass all the hardware and stick with The Beatles: Rock Band game only, using my existing stable of fake plastic band equipment. All my fake plastic roadies can breathe a well deserved sigh of relief.

I’m more interested in the multiple-microphone vocal harmonizing that’s rumored to be a part of the game. That makes total sense if you consider that in a lot of Beatles songs all three of the guitarists are singing!

Singing while playing guitar is, dare I say it, twice the fun — and certainly very much in the spirit of the Beatles.