So it is ridiculously hard to activate Overdrive on my guitar

[ShatteredKill]

sometimes, i literally have to shake it to activate Overdrive while other times it just goes off by itself. Is this a common occurrence in the Rock Band guitar or do I need to send in for a replacement?

[psyborg]

Same here.

[Supergeek]

Happens to me too.

[rahdon]

I've gotta hold my axe straight up and down for it to go off, a buddy's guitar seems to go off at the slightest touch. My strum bar has also loosened up considerably, I still can't decide if I actually like or dislike that, either way I'm considering getting a replacement.

[Senkoy]

Same here straight out of the box. Then my strum bar went so i ordered a new one and i hope the new one's overdrive mechanism doesnt suck.

[BornToBeWild]

Same here. Seems to be a design flaw. I have 2 sets for PS3 and both guitars have problems sometime with overdrive.

[Brane Ded]

Activating overdrive with my guitar requires holding it upside down, shaking it, chanting, and making a small ritual donation of my blood.

[HellishFiend]

Activating overdrive with my guitar requires holding it upside down, shaking it, chanting, and making a small ritual donation of my blood.

that's rock. \m/

[jakedoom]

sometimes, i literally have to shake it to activate Overdrive while other times it just goes off by itself. Is this a common occurrence in the Rock Band guitar or do I need to send in for a replacement?

I have this same problem.. so when I want to store up for a solo, it goes off during some easy bit.. and in a solo when I want to activate it I have to shake the damn thing to death.

[mind_in_rewind]

The GHII SG is the last guitar I've been able to activate star power/overdrive when I want to.

X-Plorer, no. Les Paul, no. Strat, no.

The Strat is still my favorite, though. I just wish my replacement would come. it was hard re-adjusting to the Les Paul.

[Brane Ded]

I had been using the LP but the green button is crapping out so now I'm down to the Explorer.

[SlivedCupWinner]

um, try pushing the back button....works great and much easier than flailing about. Though less cool.

[ShoeKyou]

I am almost sure that this is the solution to all of your problems.

Unplug the strat, and when you're plugging it back in, make sure the you're holding it at a level where you will hold it while playing.

You see, when the strat turns on, the overdrive tilt sensor thingamadoo resets to zero, and uses that to decide when to activate overdrive. If you have the guitar at a weird angle when you turn it on, then holding it normally might make the sensor think it's tilted, causing overdrive to turn on constantly, and making it hard to turn on when you try and tilt it.

I sure hope this helps most of you.

[Spikenog]

um, try pushing the back button....works great and much easier than flailing about. Though less cool.


QFT

Hitting the back button is very easy to do even mid stumming....learn it, live it, rock it!!!

[calseeor]

I've had the same problem with it. I find myself pushing the button to activate it rather than trying to tilt the guitar. Needless to say, more times than not this causes me to screw up my playing and so I activate overdrive right after I drop from a X4 multiplier to none.

[DansNutz]

Same problem here. Although when I WANT to activate it, I can do so with just a normal tilt. But other times I'll be playing and it goes off for no reason. Kind of worries me for later in the game when I want to store it for some hard solos....I might be screwed. Thinking of just going back to my Les Paul for now.

[tbradshaw]

I am almost sure that this is the solution to all of your problems.

Unplug the strat, and when you're plugging it back in, make sure the you're holding it at a level where you will hold it while playing.

You see, when the strat turns on, the overdrive tilt sensor thingamadoo resets to zero, and uses that to decide when to activate overdrive. If you have the guitar at a weird angle when you turn it on, then holding it normally might make the sensor think it's tilted, causing overdrive to turn on constantly, and making it hard to turn on when you try and tilt it.

I sure hope this helps most of you.

Do you have any evidence for this claim? I just finished working on my overdrive sensor last night and this doesn't seem to be the case.

[tbradshaw]

I was having a very difficult time with my overdrive sensor as well, and since I've already been in my strat several times to tweak the strum bar I thought I would give it a crack.

After taking off the back of the guitar, you'll find the overdrive activator components on a small circuit board right in the middle of the body. They look like capacitors, only longer with golden tips. Inside of them are little BB's to make contact on orientation change. On my guitar (which appears to be a first revision guitar), there were two activators, mounted in parallel, on opposite sides of the little board dedicated for them.

Potential issues:

1) The overdrive will only activate on a "fresh" trigger. If your BB is stuck in the "on" position, you'll get no overdrive.

2) The BB can get "mostly" stuck, such that even a tiny jostle will fire off your overdrive. Almost as bad as no overdrive at all.

The star power activators on the PS2 GH2 controllers were easy to figure out. There were four of them and they were mounted skewed such that they had to clearly be alternating to fire off.

My arbitrary personal constraints:

1) I would rather have an overdrive that is harder to trigger but predictable than one that is easy to trigger but unreliable.

2) I don't mind lifting my guitar a lot to make it happen.

So what I did is take the "lower" activator, and I just carefully bent it down about 35 degrees. Now, instead of two activators oriented redundantly, the "top" activator is parallel with the guitar and the "bottom" activator points down towards my knee.

Results?

Perfection. The guitar now never accidentally overdrives, because the BB in the "lower" activator can't accidentally touch the contact-side of the activator. Then, when it's time to rock out I take the guitar completely to 90 degrees and it fires perfectly.

I'm so stoked. Now if I could just get the damn trills down in GGHT, I'd be done with my expert campaign. :)

[Adamalicious]

I have the same problem of the overdrive activating at random. Has Harmonix or EA acknowledged this issue yet? I don't want to send it in for warranty only to get a new one with the same problem.

[Senkoy]

Yeah, if my new one still has that issue i'm sending it in for a new one one i hear the issue has been addressed. If nothing is fixed and my warranty expires, THEN i'll fix it myself.

[Zanaflex]

I was having a very difficult time with my overdrive sensor as well, and since I've already been in my strat several times to tweak the strum bar I thought I would give it a crack.

After taking off the back of the guitar, you'll find the overdrive activator components on a small circuit board right in the middle of the body. They look like capacitors, only longer with golden tips. Inside of them are little BB's to make contact on orientation change. On my guitar (which appears to be a first revision guitar), there were two activators, mounted in parallel, on opposite sides of the little board dedicated for them.

Potential issues:

1) The overdrive will only activate on a "fresh" trigger. If your BB is stuck in the "on" position, you'll get no overdrive.

2) The BB can get "mostly" stuck, such that even a tiny jostle will fire off your overdrive. Almost as bad as no overdrive at all.

The star power activators on the PS2 GH2 controllers were easy to figure out. There were four of them and they were mounted skewed such that they had to clearly be alternating to fire off.

My arbitrary personal constraints:

1) I would rather have an overdrive that is harder to trigger but predictable than one that is easy to trigger but unreliable.

2) I don't mind lifting my guitar a lot to make it happen.

So what I did is take the "lower" activator, and I just carefully bent it down about 35 degrees. Now, instead of two activators oriented redundantly, the "top" activator is parallel with the guitar and the "bottom" activator points down towards my knee.

Results?

Perfection. The guitar now never accidentally overdrives, because the BB in the "lower" activator can't accidentally touch the contact-side of the activator. Then, when it's time to rock out I take the guitar completely to 90 degrees and it fires perfectly.

I'm so stoked. Now if I could just get the damn trills down in GGHT, I'd be done with my expert campaign. :)

If you look at that circurt board again, you will see a little white outline where the capcitors are SPOSED to be. My bro was having issues with his, and when I first saw it one of caps were bent all wrong, SLOWLY bent it back tot he line and it was good to go.

Do you think the two capacitors do the same exact thing?

[Trevlac217]

I had just gotten off the phone with the warranty people over this issue when I saw your post tbradshaw. I'm glad I didn't vouch for the quick replacement, because after your fix, I don't need a new guitar and I'm not out $80! :)

Thank you