OK folks, my RockPedal finally arrived and heres what I think of it.
First off with the poor exchange rate with the US dollars its now not as much as a bargain as it would have been a year ago. I got the Rock Pedal with practice beater and this took the total cost to something like £80, however the stinger in the tail is the cheapest of delivery options is another £40 or so on top to that hikes it up a lot.
The it arrived in the UK where the customs held it and took the pleasure of charging me another £25 for VAT - OUCH!!! So all told it cost me about £150.
So is it worth it?
When it arrived I got it out of the box, however there are no instructions at all in the box with it. You have to go on their web site (
Rock Band Drum Pedal - Rock Band Drum Pedal Replacement - Rock Band Bass Pedal) and watch the instruction videos on how to do it. Unfortunately for me this was tricky because my 360 and TV is in a completely different room to my PC and I cant plug in my rock pedal to rock band in free practice mode and adjust the sensitivity point whilst watching the video, so I had to keep going in back and forth. Another minor gripe is the videos are ok for setting up the individual settings (tension, height, beater pad etc) but there is no video for setting up the practice pad, beater and all the relevant sensitivities in on instruction video in one go. Hence I struggled to get it set to the right ride height and tension with the beater in the right place and the trigger working. After about 30 mins of trial and error in practice mode on RB2 I finally got it to a place I liked and thats when I tried playing it in anger. Another thing to remember is that with the practice pad and beater in place it is quite large and because of the Ion kit frame at floor level I couldnt get the pedal quite as far to the right as I would normally have it because of the width of the practice pad base, but got used to the new location pretty quickly.
...and yes, once set up the pedal is brilliant! It isnt much quieter than the stock Ion as you get a beat noise rather than the clank as the pedal hits the 'bottom' of its travel but I think its less intrusive a noise (my wife thinks its marginally better). However for feel I really like it. I find it is much more normal feeling, and I dont have issues like I did with the original Ion pedal when I had the pedal fully down and I wiggled my foot fractionally and it would often register a hit by mistake. The RockPedal doesnt seem to have the same tiny movement sensitivity (which is a very good thing) and only seems to go off when you want it to. As for scores, I managed to play some tracks sight reading for the first time and did very well. I havent beaten any of my previous high scores set on the Ion pedal, however I havent played for a couple of weeks (on holiday) and I really practiced hard to get some of them so wouldnt expect to beat those scores first time out.
Overall a definite improvement over the Ion pedal. Is it worth £150? Possibly if you have spare cash burning a hole in your pocket. I dont know how much a real pedal and kick box would come out to but think the RockPedal is a good, realistic (for a non drummer like me!) compromise.
I give it an 8 out of 10 (it would have got more but for the price and setting up complications).
David
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