I’m not sure my drums are working right. They don’t respond to every hit of the pad when I do fast fills and what not. I’ve tested this in the practice tutorial section where you can just wail away and it does not keep up with my hits. This makes it really tough to do decent on the later hard songs because of the 16th notes in alot of the fills.
My question:
Does anyone else find their drums don’t respond effectively? IS this one of the known defects?
If by fills you mean the mid-song and ending drum solos (I’m not a musician, I just play one in my living room), I haven’t noticed anything wrong, though I’m either going at tempo or flailing wildly and wouldn’t notice anyway.
Yes, sort of, but it is usually just one pad that has gone out or is just not working right out of the box. It’s also possible that on the really fast fills you’re just not hitting the pad hard enough (I’m sure you’ve already considered that but it had to be said). I’d go into the drumfill tutorial and just focus on one pad at a time to determine which one is causing you trouble.
If you identify a bad pad you can send it back to EA for warranty replacement or the latest (Feb.) issue of Offical XBOX Magazine has directions on how to fix your own instruments.
The pads wear out, yes. My yellow pad is toast. I had to engineer a new one with a Radio Shack piezo and a 7" metal plate. My blue one now is starting to act up a bit as well. It really is frustrating, and I can’t wait until (I hope) third-party developers come up with sturdier drum kits.
Rock Band replaced my guitar no problem - I filled out a short questionnaire about the problem on their website and they sent a new one out to me 2 day air with a package and prepaid postage to send my old guitar back, I just had to give a CC # they could charge in case I didn’t send the original guitar back within 30 days.
I’m not sure if they’re still doing this or if the warranty period has expired, but it’s definitely worth a try. I wouldn’t recommend doing any at-home fixes for your products as they may invalidate the warranty.
Do your drums respond to the fast hits if you do it very lightly? Apparently, one of the common problems is that on harder hits, the spring that holds the sensor to the head doesn’t respond fast enough, so by the time you make the second hit the sensor still hasn’t made it back into position.
The Rock Band forums are full of people discussing various problems with the drums and homemade fixes. But at this point, your best bet is to just request a replacement from EA.
I’m jonesing for some 3rd party drums as well. Mine are working fine still, but I’d like a set that has cymbals and quieter heads and a better pedal.