I had one defective RB guitar myself. Though I got it replaced very quickly and have not had any issues. I have two wired and two wireless (RB2) Strats and have had no issues.

I never had a star power problem. The star power issues I had with the strat have been addressed in RB2. The RB1 guitars would not activate star power easily (if at all) when sitting down. Stand up and the RB1 guitar activates star power just as it should.

The trade off now seems that the RB2 guitar, just like the GH3 Les Paul, will start star power unexpectedly, with only the slightest of movements. It is a trade off I can live with, as I regularly play GH/RB sitting down.

Though there are some who continue to have problems, i have not heard of any wide spread issues with the guitars like there were when the game first came out. They changed the manufacturing process pretty early on, so yes, the first batch of RB1 guitars had major issues.

I know Jason had an issue with his Strat that he bought, but got it replaced with a working one.

The one we got in the bundle had the fewest problems of the two we've tried so far, but it was still far from perfect. I went back to GH on the PS2 to see if I was just imagining it and I surely was not. I banged out a 98-99% on Bark At The Moon on Medium with the old original GH guitar, no problem, so it was definitely the RB guitar having issues.

There's a lot of skepticism out there, not helped by the overriding sentiment among many gamers that EA would sell their mothers if it would help their bottom line. I hate to say it, but I'm now one of those in the camp of "What EA can't get right, Red Octane can."

Guitar Hero is so much better than Rock Band anyway... and I've preorder the new Guitar Hero with all of the kit, so should be pretty awesome! :)

I went back and played some GH3 after playing Rock Band for a while, and equipment issues aside, I found myself preferring GH3's song list. I finally finished the solo career, beat Lou, and then got clobbered with that DragonForce song in the credits. Talk about a boss battle one-upping the boss battle, so to speak. That was awesome, especially with no way to fail. Just rock!

But seeing the guys n gals of Penny Arcade obliterate "Any Way You Want It" on Expert in Rock Band on stage at PAX 08 was incredible. Each game definitely has its strengths and weaknesses.

The Guitar hero II guitar PS3 suffers from the neak contacts intermittanltly making contact, on playing tracks with lots of fingerwork very quick some notes were bummed even thou I know i got them this was due to the flex in the neak and the contacts, being a repair tech i took my guitar apart and hard wired all of the neak contacts, never had a problem since although i can no longer remove the neck and store in 2 parts )o: The start, select and the most used fret buttons rubber membrane actually split resulting in the buttons not springing back out and getting stuck in, sometimes always making contact till you hit them from behind. This I solved again with replacement rubber mebranes I salvaged from an old office telephone, worked a treat, I did actually build in a Lithium Ion 3.6 volt @ 1.5A battery (CGR18650) and made a charding circuit that ran off the USB of the PS3 this saved me having to replace the batts ever again (o: Just a little more thought on the design and better quality components and they would of got it right and reliable first time, perhaps they should give ma a jon (o: