GoodWoodMods are in; ACDC Track Pack Soon

So, my GoodWoodMods stealth mesh drum heads came in yesterday. I'm shocked at how quiet they are. I'll post a review pretty soon. Also, expect an update of DLC downloads. Sounds like I'll be getting some DLC with some money I'm getting in. Also, the ACDC Track Pack is getting released on November 2nd, 2008. It  will be priced at $30 for Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, and PS2 versions.

New Mods; Back In Order; Updates on Status

After taking a break from Rock Band (I know, such sacrilege), RedDevilD and I are back in Rock-Band mode. We've been playing around with drum kits and guitars. We've found a good mod that will work REALLY WELL with an EL kit.

What the mod is: Take the heads off of a QM set, put them in a specific way on a EL set.

What this achieves is this: You get a lot more rebound and the notes always register. How to make a bad EL set and a bad QM set good essentially. If you take the red pad, there will be a post on the bottom of the drum head that is supposed to go into a slot. Well, the EL kit doesn't have these slots, so we are going to put that post on the Southwest corner of the drum kit. The yellow pad post is going in the Northwest corner. The blue pad post in the Northeast corner. The green pad post is going in the Southeast. This makes the posts as far as possible from each other, cutting out the crosstalk.

Also, on a side note about drum kits. If you are experiencing crosstalk (you hit yellow only and the blue fires as well in game), take the pad head off and rotate it 90 degrees. The post should be farther away from the pad it was crosstalking with. Like if I hit the yellow pad and it crosstalks with blue, I would turn the pad 90 degrees clockwise to get the post farther away from the blue pad.

Guitar mods: If you take a pedal and plug it into the tiny headphone jack (located near the XBox/PS3 button) on the new RB2 guitar (the sunburst one), you can use the pedal to activate Overdrive. Protip: If you hold down the pedal, you won't be able to activate Overdrive by tilting the guitar. If your guitar is activating Overdrive a lot on it's own, look into this.

RedDevilD recently moved in with me, so we are playing Rock Band a lot more now. This is gonna be interesting to see JUST HOW MUCH we play now. Don't worry guys, we are still doing 500 Songs to Freedom.

Crunch Time, T-Minus 3 months

So, with the beginning of the next week, we've hit the 3 month mark. We've hit crunch time. This is the time when we kick up our practicing and we start refining our technique. We start making it so that we aren't practicing passing songs now; we are working on getting great scores. Some people still call this a long shot for us, but it's not a long shot, not by any means.

New DLC is being released every week. It's hard to afford it all, but we are making due. If anyone would like to help us out, feel free to donate.

RockPedal Review

Okay, so here it is. The RockPedal review I promised. Let's start from the top.

The RockPedal comes in a big brown box. It's a decently weighted box and the pedal is surrounded by your standard brown paper (similar weight to newspaper). It also comes with a very professional warranty and info sheet to help you get your pedal to the appropriate settings for you. Also, this sheet also contains information needed to contact the people at RockPedal in case you have any trouble whatsoever. On to the pedal itself.

The pedal is very solid. It's full metal, top to bottom, save the sensor itself, and the velcro on the bottom. The bottom is a solid plate, so it sits flat on the floor. There are 3 strips of velcro on the bottom of the pedal, each about 6 inches long, to keep the pedal from moving on carpet. This works very well. 

Moving up from the bottom plate, we have two spikes (one on each side of the footboard) that can be screwed down into carpet to keep the pedal from moving, if it's still moving after the pedal is placed on carpet. These spikes have not been needed in my playing with the pedal. 

If you have the pedal facing you (it angles up and away from you and the carpet spikes are on the far side of the pedal), on the right side, you will find a screw sticking out away from the pedal and at an angle upwards. This screw allows for you to clamp the pedal down onto a practice pad (from what I gather). Right above this clamp screw (still on the right side), we find the spring tension adjustment screw. How this works is a three step process. The first step is to loosen the screw that is holding the spring tension adjustment from moving. The second step is to adjust the spring tension adjustment to pull on the spring further, or to release the spring a little to make the pedal easier to push down. This won't make a huge difference in your play. The last step is to tighten the screw back down once you have made the adjustment to suit your needs. 

Moving on the other side of the pedal, on the left side of the footboard, we find the holder for the drum key. In the middle, facing you so that you can read the word "pulse" inscribe on it is the footboard. This is where all the action takes place. You push this part down to activate the sensor and cause the pedal to hit. 

Moving further up the pedal, back over to the right side, and above the spring, we have another tension adjustment that does this in a roundabout way. How this tension adjustment works is when you loosen this screw, you increase the angle of the pedal, causing it to travel further to trigger the sensor, and causing it to pull the spring farther which creates more resistance.

Moving on over to the left, the next screw we find is for the beater to be inserted. The next screw is the lower of the two last remainng screws. This screw is what determines exactly when your pedal will trigger and how much your pedal will travel past the trigger point. This one was the one I spent the most time adjusting first. Once I got this one right, it's pretty much a "Set it and forget it." I have not touched it since I got it exactly where it is. How it works is that it has you increase the angle of the pedal to trigger the sensor later and decrease the angle to have it trigger earlier. Decreasing it too much will cause it to smack into the clamp bar, while increasing it too much will cause the pedal to not trigger at all. 

The last screw is the screw that releases the double chain drive from the pedal. You shouldn't ever need to touch this.

I think one of the coolest things about this pedal is the use of a proximity-style sensor. It doesn't have any parts that smack together, nor do any of the sensor's parts move. If this pedal didn't have a wire, you would probably never have know it could be used for Rock Band. The sensor blends in with the rest of the pedal. This pedal is the most professional looking pedal I've seen.

Playing with the pedal is interesting. It can be played out of the box, but I was double hitting with it a lot out of the box. I adjusted the pedal to hit just before the pedal bottomed out. Being that this is pretty much an actual pedal that can be used with a drum kit, you can do a lot of the foot techniques to achieve double bass hits and other pedal tricks. 

I've used the pedal for a good week now, and it's phenomenal. It's well worth the money. If you've hit the brick wall with the stock Rock Band pedal, or you pedal has broken one too many times, I would suggest investing in this pedal. I hit the brick wall with the stock pedal, and I've stepped my game up by investing in this pedal. It is the Official Pedal of 500 Songs to Freedom.

The link to the RockPedal website is RockPedal.com.