Where do I even start with these drums?  I guess I’ll start at the beginning of my own personal experience.  Prior to the release of Guitar Hero World Tour I had all the other Guitar Hero releases for the PlayStation 2.  I didn’t yet own anything from the Rock Band series, so I had no experience with any drum peripherals.  Since the PS2’s popularity was beginning to wane in light of 7th generation consoles, I made the decision to begin gathering up Guitar Hero games and controllers for the 360 from then on, and I thought the bundled World Tour set would be a great start.

The very day the World Tour bundle hit shelves I spent the evening out shopping and after half a dozen stores I finally found a box for the 360 in a corner of the now defunct Circuit City.  Immediately when I got home we got the usual crowd together and began playing.  Nobody was particularly great at the drums and it was quite awhile before I was able to take an accurate assessment due to my love of the plastic guitar.  A few days later with a lot of trial and error, we finally deduced that the red drum pad wasn’t working unless it was hit extremely hard.  We opened the kit up to find that the wires were put on with some very flimsy glue, so we used some tape to hold the wires on.  This worked for a week or so but pretty soon the same problem began anew.  This time we covered the area in tape.  From then on there were no more problems with the pad ceasing to work completely but the level of pressure it took to register a hit was inconsistent.  Time passed, all my stuff went through a move, the group broke up, and for about a year this thing sat in an attic.

I forgot to mention that sometime during all of this Red Octane issued a sort of apology for the first run of drum kits that ran off the line promising to make improvements to the second batch.  This didn’t really do me any good.  Fortunately in some hidden corner of the internet, Red Octane could be contacted about the faulty drum kits.  Weeks later I got this little device in the mail and a URL to visit for software.  The idea was to plug this chord into both the kit and computer.  This software would allow the sensitivity of the pads to be adjusted.  I never bothered with this as by then I knew the problem was a mechanical issue and simply amping up the red pad to be hypersensitive would be a superficial solution.

Once my interest in the games returned sometime later, I bought a soldering iron and sat down to figure it out once and for all.  I discovered that in addition to the poor quality glue used in the factory, there was almost no wiring exposed.  So I did the stripping, fumbled my way through two soldering joints, and while it still misses a hit here and there, it finally worked much better.  Time was spent with these drums in active use, and pretty soon the green pad began having problems.  Once again I opened it up and this time took care of both the blue and green pads, lest anymore issues arise.  The “cymbals” never seemed to have any issues.  With everything soldered, the drum kit worked pretty well.  I’m still not convinced it’s as great as it should be, but it does work.  The kick petals for these sets were notorious for snapping in half; luckily no one has ever snapped mine.  The one redeeming aspect was the ability for a splitter to be used and 2 kick petals for the maniacal double bass in games like Metallica, but this redemption was quickly snuffed because there was no way to ever get a second foot pedal unless you’d been at Best Buy the day of the Guitar Hero Metallica release or some stupid shit like that.

Over time I would come to discover that there were plenty of problems with the second run of drum kits as well and most people abandoned the drum peripheral altogether or held out for another bundle.  As for me, there was a Toys R Us selling some Beatles Rock Band bundles for around half price a year or 2 after their release.  On top of that, they had some kind of Christmas sale going on back in 2010 and I snagged it up.  Initially I had been a little hesitant because of all the bad press surrounding the first Rock Band’s drum kit but after some research (where I found out what the difference between the Beatles bundle and the Beatles value bundle was) I learned that Rock Band drum kits were in the value bundle and repainted Rock Band 2 drum kits were in the regular bundle.  Immediately I was impressed with Rock Band’s drum kit.  It played exactly like I thought the drums ought to play but never got to experience.  As for the 2 kick pedals, the drum kit actually had an improvement over the standard Rock Band 2 kit and included an extra jack.  Even better was the fact that an extra Rock Band bass petal with a reinforced metal plate could be bought at any video game store. More on this kit right here.

You know what the funniest part of it all was?  The guitar that came in the World Tour bundle is the finest fake plastic guitar I’ve ever played and remains my very favorite instrument controller to this day.

Reviewed by The Cubist