Xbox 360 Rock Band Wireless Fender Wooden Stratocaster Replica - Sunburst

When Mad Catz announced the $300 Fender guitar replica made many question how out-of-hand peripheral costs were getting, especially with the music genre. If you are a Rock Band 2 enthusiast, with all the DLC offered by Harmonix on XBOX Live, tons of peripherals laying around, and those of you that have the ION Drum set sitting in your game room, you will want (and must) have this.

Being a guitar player for over a decade, I must say this makes playing that much more fun for me personally. Those individuals that have only played this game with the "kit" included instruments, be it Rock Band or Guitar Hero, may hate this item. This guitar is the full size and full weight of my a Fender Stratocaster, and feels natural to play with my background. Compared to the plastic completion, this thing is huge, and may effect you "shredders" out there. This guitar is not as accurate during faster parts of most songs (do to real fret spacing), I must say that I don't mind missing...Read more

Frustration. This is my third Mad Catz guitar within the last two months and all have exhibited the same flaw. After the first couple hours of use, one (or more) of the buttons begins to bind if not pressed exactly on center. In the case of this current Stratocaster it is the blue button (the previous two were Precision Bass guitars with binding red buttons). A binding button makes it all but impossible to get a decent score since you spend your time concentrating on pressing one of your buttons firmly and on center rather than having fun with the game. Additionally you can't slide a finger over from an adjacent button since the button binds with an edge press.

Other thoughts:
- The controller looks terrific, just as pretty as in the glamour shots.

- The finish of the wooden neck could use a bit more attention, it looks good but feels not quite finished. It gets more coarse where the neck flairs into the headstock. The headstock is high gloss and pretty...Read more

As a disclaimer, allow me to state that I am an expert-level player in Rock Band. I have an extensively large quantity of DLC music, am able to clear every song I own, and have unlocked the platinum instrument icon in Rock Band 2 shortly after its release. I have previously played rhythm games with the RedOctane Gibson SG for PS2, the Les Paul for Xbox 360, and the stock RB2 Fender Stratocaster controller. I will be comparing this controller to the RB2 Strat. I will not discuss any drawbacks that are implied for those who play lefty. (Any shortcomings you would normally experience from that are still seen here; this should not come as a surprise.)

This is an excellent controller, by far. It takes almost everything the RB2 Strat has to offer but with a clearly higher level of quality and feel. Both sets of frets are exquisite; I cannot fathom a controller design with frets better than what this controller has to offer. It feels almost effortless to fret even the most...Read more