Guitar Hero World Tour hardware problems (drum issues isolated?)

30 October 2008

Posted by:Josh

Guitar Hero World Tour has been going through plenty of issues of it’s own, just like LittleBigPlanet and issues that its rival, Rock Band, had also gone through when it launched last year.

These include reports with the music peripherals including malfunctioning microphones, faulty guitar strum bars and drum sensitivity issues. The latter though has been a much bigger problem than anything else (the drums in Guitar Hero World Tour are pressure sensitive allowing players to achieve different volumes by hitting the drum pads harder or softer), and thus Activision has pledged to address the drum sensitivity issue via a “tuning kit” that they will be sending out to people who need them. This will allow players to adjust the sensitivity of the drums manually, and it’s been described as a USB MIDI device.

Specifically people were mostly reporting problems with the red snare drum pad and the yellow symbol on the Rock Band World Tour Drum Kit. Both are located on the left side of the kit and gamers were reporting that they would either fail to register hits or misread hits.

This was likely due to shoddy wiring in the pads or poor quality control during the manufacturing of the pads. So before Activision addressed the problem, people had been doing their own fixes, including cardboard rigging, masking tape fixes and even re-soldering wiring. Which isn’t recommended, as it violates your warranty, and now Activision is addressing the issue as mentioned above.

Activision also said that these issues seem to be an “isolated incident” and had this to say to GameSpot:

“We have learned that certain drum controllers manufactured for Guitar Hero World Tour have sensitivity issues,” reads the statement. “We believe that these controllers are limited to ones in the earlier manufacturing stages. While we believe that this was an isolated manufacturing issue, we are stepping our efforts to randomly test our drum controllers so customers can be assured they work properly. In the event any consumers do experience problems with their drum controllers associated with sensitivity issues, we are offering a drum tuning kit that will enable players to fully optimize their drums.”

“Our goal would be to immediately address any hardware issues Guitar Hero World Tour players have with the game. Consumers should visit the Activision Publishing customer support Web site at www.activision.com/ support website or call 310-255-2050 in the U.S. where a customer care representative will assist them. Activision is fully committed to the highest quality manufacturing standards, and to satisfying every Guitar Hero World Tour fan so they can enjoy the best musical gaming experience ever created.”

Hopefully this will be resolved soon so people can get back to rocking out.

Categories: News, PS2 News, PS3 News, Wii News, Xbox 360 News

Tony K

This is the third day we’ve had the GH:WT full bundle, and the first day we’ve had out the drums. Already two major problems have developed, the first being a dramatically oversensitive blue pad on the guitar’s slider bar. During song sections where the slider bar is designed to be used, the highlighted path on the song highway will flicker between the active pad and blue. It’s bad enough that the pad even triggers when nothing’s remotely near the slider bar, often ruining songs with ‘bad’ notes. The second problem is the one mentioned in the article with undersensitive registration and velocity with the red drum pad, occurring after about only three hours of use. I don’t have any complaints with the actual game, but the quality of the peripherals has just been nothing but disappointing so far.
lynsey

i have had guitar hero world tour for less than 4 weeks the yellow wire is snapped and i cant fix it i have joined the wires back together and no luck its crap it cost a fair bit shame they didnt spend more on the quality of it my guitar also squickes
Cindy

guitar hero for wii the yellow cymbal plays by itself so i’ve had to unplug it everytime i plug it back up it clicks on and on and on
how do i stop it…
Tony

I have had the 360 for about a month and I can see why the drum pads have problems, my red snare pad stopped working, the cover is easy to pull off. When I did the main pad just fell off. Both wire appear to have come off, and they are not even soldered, they just used some kind of latex epoxy to make the connection. Very poor construction, not sure if I should try to reconnect it or contact them, you would think something like this would be warranteed.
Kim

i have a problem i haven’t read on any of these entries yet and the solution may lie somewhere in my OPTIONS, but the song starts and the strip for the notes never comes up. it’s just the band, they start, one note plays and the song fails. any suggestions?
pissed off

i had my drums for the wii for like two weeks before the red pad stopped reading the signal. i’ve called activision like six times and they are supposed to send me the shipping label so i can send my drums back. i check my email everyweek and its never there. i call back to start a new claim every week. im seriously sick and tired with activison and they way they aren’t following throught. ive had gh1-world tour and this is the first time its been dissapointing. im seriously thinking of taking this to the press. played it five times. come on. really. i should have totally gotten rockband instead.
very mega pissed.
pissed off.
Russ

I have just phoned activision support(Activision UK on 08702 412 148) as the RED Pad is not registering (It does register if you hit it hard) I purchased the drum kit from HMV. Activision have sent me an email with a refrence number asking me to send them proof of purchase. Once this has been received by them they will send me a refrence number. I am to take this number along with the drum kit back to HMV where i have been told they will replace it with a brand spanking new one
Russ

-=UPDATE=-

I contacted HMV Driectly and they asked me to bring my old kit in. I’ve just done that and they’ve replaced it with a new one. They didn’t even check the contents of the box and i noticed i didn’t give them back the actual game so now i have 2 copies of GHWT and one complete band KIT.

The whole replacement process took less than an hour …happy dayz

Thanks HMV
Robbie

I got GHWT about 4 weeks ago and my guitar is also having issues. the blue button seems to not register all the time. what the hell can i do to fix it.
http://www.powertuneplus.com/gh/ Josh Straub

For anyone wanting a free DIY fix to red pad GHWT drum issues, check out my Photo Repair Guides at http://www.powertuneplus.com/gh/ I created these guides after having to repair my own poor sensitivity red pad drum kit issues.