Posts Tagged ‘Squier’

As big fans of Rock Band here on the site, we’re also big fans of contests, so a contest giving away Rock Band gear and more is something that’s definitely going to grab a lot of attention. And the prize for the winner of this is going to be very happy indeed!

RBN authors That Authoring Group (aka TAG) are hosting a contest called the TAG “Endless Setlist,” which features THIRTY of their songs in one massive play list… and you can already probably see where this is going. No one said it was going to be easy! But that’s the bad news. The good news is that the winner will be randomly selected from the Rock Band 3 leaderboards as anyone who has competed the entire setlist on any instrument, so  there’s no need to FC 30 songs in a row.

It gets better, too. Winners of the contest will get the following treasure trove of prizes (this is unbelievable):

• Entire Trews discography, signed by the band, which includes:
• House Of Ill Fame CD
• Den Of Thieves CD
• No Time For Later CD
• Acoustic – Friends & Total Strangers CD
• Acoustic – Friends & Total Strangers DVD
• Hope & Ruin CD
• Hope & Ruin Vinyl
• Signed copy of Rishloo’s Feathergun album
• Signed Rishloo poster
• Limited edition very RARE signed Halcyon Way poster
• Copies of the following CDs:
• Halcyon Way’s Building the Tower and Indoctrination
• CYNIC’s Traced in Air
• THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN’s Option Paralysis
• SEPTICFLESH Communion
• Drum sticks and drum tape
• T-shirts from Fender, Martin, Vic Firth, and other brands
• Cooler with an iPod dock
• Bunch of RB stickers (instrument icons and John Dee artwork), pins, wristbands, a RBN tote bag
• Signed copy of Rock Band 3 for the Xbox 360
• 3200 MS points

And the pièce de résistance, one FENDER PRO GUITAR and a MIDI ADAPTER for the Xbox 360!

Don’t wait to enter this contest! You have less than THREE DAYS. As of publishing, you have 39 other people to compete with, so the odds are still pretty good for getting the motherlode of Rock Band prize packs! Good luck!

[via RockBand.com]

After some suggested that initial reports from earlier this month about the Rock Band 3 Fender Squier being discontinued were premature, the latest news out of Harmonix and Fender does in fact appear to confirm that Fender will no longer be manufacturing new Squiers for the game.

Granted that we hear a lot of people wanted to get their hands on one and never had the opportunity, particularly those abroad, communication from Fender through Harmonix suggests that there is enough inventory in retail channels to fulfill residual demand. Not sure what to think about that one, but I’m assuming they are making the decision based on better information than we have here. Harmonix is looking to get more information out for international folks who still wish to procure an instrument.

Oh, and as the Squier (at least for the time being) and Mustang Pro Guitars are still available at retail outlets, Harmonix reiterates that they are still fully committed to Pro Guitar/Bass and Pro DLC, so that should help calm a few nerves.

Anyway, you can read the full update from @HMXHenry below, which was originally posted on the RockBand.com forums.

Here’s the situation as I understand it: due to significant manufacturing lead times and the quantity currently available in the retail channel, Fender has decided not to place any more back orders for direct fulfillment. That would explain why, as some posters in this thread have pointed out, some music stores are unable to take back orders, but Squiers generally appear to be readily available at Best Buys.

What this means for you, the people still looking to pick up a Squier, is that Best Buy (specifically Best Buys with Music Centers) is currently your best bet. There should be a sufficient quantity in the pipeline to meet the current demand, and when we get back into the office on Monday we’ll begin next steps with Best Buy and Fender to help you track availability and assist in getting stock where it needs to be.

As I mentioned in my previous posts, the crew at Harmonix is still fully committed to supporting Rock Band 3, Pro Mode, Pro Guitar and Pro DLC. Between the Squiers and Mustangs currently available at retail, as well as the upcoming Pro Guitar DLC upgrades, there are still plenty of options for people looking to get into Pro Guitar and we’ve got some awesome stuff coming up that we think people will be really excited for.

I’ll continue to collect feedback from this thread and from PMs, and thanks again to everyone that contacted me with specifics. I’ll follow up here once we have contact info for Best Buy or more information on international solutions.

[RockBand.com]

Well that was quick. After nearly a year to the day that this revolutionary peripheral was unveiled, it is now being discontinued.

I had a few people overseas send me a heads up a few weeks ago that according to their local retailers, the Rock Band 3 Squier was unavailable to order as it was discontinued. I made a note to follow up on this, but it looks like someone on the RockBand.com forums did the heavy lifting for me. Forum user “Zubazz” contacted Fender directly to inquire about the Squier availability after running in to a similar situation, and was told that the hybrid guitar is being discontinued.

I contacted Fender first thing this morning to corroborate this, and unfortunately was indeed told the same thing. Basically, what that means is that when the current stock of Squiers out there is exhausted, that’s it. So if you have one already, consider yourself lucky, because it seems like if you didn’t get in on the pre-sale, many people never even got a chance to snag one.

Obviously the abandonment of the marquis instrument of Rock Band 3′s Pro mode is not good news. As far as I know, the Mustang Pro Guitar is still available, but after playing on a Squier, it’s tough to go back to the Mustang. Feel free to vent in the comments…

UPDATED: Apparently Harmonix is hearing reports to the contrary from Fender. Here is what @HMXHenry posted over in the RockBand.com forums (bold added for emphasis):

Hey gang. Thanks to everyone for your patience while all the Community / PR folks were out in LA for E3. We’re all back in the office now so we’ll be able to devote a lot more attention to discussions on the forums.

As HMXcj mentioned in an earlier post, this is the first we’ve heard of any plans to discontinue the Squier. We’ve reached out to Fender (who is handling all the production and distribution of this hardware) for more info and we’ll follow up here as soon as we get the full scoop from them.

Initial responses from our contacts at Fender indicate that the Squier has not been discontinued at this time, so there may be some confusion at the retail level. There are still Squiers in the retail channel and MadCatz is still producing Mustangs, so there is still plenty of support for Pro Guitar and Pro mode as a whole. We don’t have any plans to discontinue support for Pro Guitar DLC, and there are still charts being authored months out for upcoming releases.

Since there hasn’t been any official announcement regarding the status of the Squier, we’re looking for any and all details regarding where this info is coming from. It appears to to be coming from the retail side, so if anyone has been told that the Squier is being discontinued please PM me the name of the retailer, the location, the name of the agent you spoke with, the date, etc. Any info would be helpful to forward along to Fender so we can get some clarity as soon as possible.

Thanks again to everyone for sitting tight while we wrapped E3. We’ll post more info as soon as we have it.

The ambiguous release date for the Rock Band 3 Fender Squier Pro Guitar has been in constant flux ever since the announcement of Rock Band 3 nearly a year ago. While the US saw the exclusive release through Best Buy at the beginning of March, our international friends looking to try it out are still waiting for hard dates on when they will get their chance to purchase. Thanks to RBA reader Phil, who forwarded me an email he received from Andertons, an online music store based in the UK, regarding the latest status of the highly sought after peripheral.

“Thank you for your continued patience whilst waiting for the release in the UK of the Squier (by Fender). We have today had some further information which I’d like to pass on to keep you as informed as possible.

The Rock Band Controller guitars will be leaving Fender this week, due in to us next week (first week of May). We will be shipping those orders that are ready to go as soon as they arrive, and all orders will be sent out on a next working day delivery service. If there are any problems relating to your order we will contact you. There will be some orders that are not ready to be shipped immediately, such as orders paid for using our Interest Free Credit as there is an amount of admin needed to finalise the credit deals. We will however be aiming to have this sorted before the guitars arrive.

There is a delay with the MIDI controller for Xbox and Wii. The Playstation ones are here and in stock, but we have been advised it looks like there will be a further week’s delay on the other versions. These are coming in to Fender next week and will therefore be with us I’d imagine late in the second week of May.”

Not sure how this may impact the status of pre-orders through other countries, but after talking directly with Fender’s customer service last week, they assured me that contacting your local music instrument retailer to place an order for the guitar from Fender is probably your best course of action, as they could not give me a list of vendors (either domestically or internationally) that were actively stocking the instrument.

UPDATE: RBA reader Tufty sent me a link to a forum post that had a little more information, also sent via email from Will at Andertons. This may shed a little bit more light on the logistics process of the Rock Band 3 Fender Squier, both in general and internationally:

“Just noticed your post on the AVforum. Just to answer your question – Fender’s products are distributed in Europe from a central warehouse in Holland. This is where all quality control etc happens. The release date uncertainty (for yourself and your fellow forum members) is just because the musical instrument industry works a bit differently to the computer games one – as I’m sure you know computer games and peripherals are generally pressed in huge quantities and stock-piled before release so that there is a large quantity available for release day. Guitars don’t have a set “release day” as once they are made in a factory they all have to be physically quality controlled, which is a human process and therefore variable in terms of time. The only way they could set a date in stone is to keep it quiet until such a time as the product is manufactured and has passed QC in large bulk, which is just not how they do things.

We’re in regular contact with Fender – we’ve got the guitars coming in very soon, and there’s no reason to believe at this time that we won’t get all our allocation in one hit. As a result, everyone who’s pre-ordered will get one as quickly as we can get them out of our warehouse! We’ll be shipping everything on a next working day delivery service. The only delay in getting them now will be if a large number fail QC.

Neil’s estimate of late April/early May is conservative – the fact is we just don’t know at the moment, and we won’t know until a day or two before they’re with us. If everything’s smooth and our friends in Holland work quickly we should be looking at any time between 25th and 29th, but it’s still estimates at this point.”

Looks like some of us who have fired up Rock Band 3 in the past 12 or so hours have found out that a title update has been rolled out across the Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles. While some have been working to see what the patch fixes, Harmonix has very recently announced what exactly the update addresses, which appears to be primarily related to Pro-Guitar/Bass issues between the Squier and Mustang controllers. The full details (via HMXPope) are included below.

It is also important to note that @MrPope’s announcement says that Harmonix doesn’t “have any additional title updates planned for the foreseeable future,” which I know is going to seemingly enrage a number of you.

UPDATE: Also, if you see in the replies to HMXPope’s announcement, it appears that the original title update notes included Iron Maiden’s “The Trooper,” but had been quickly removed. This seems to corroborate earlier rumors that the song is eventually getting a Pro Guitar update!

We’ve released a new title update today which addresses an issue with how Rock Band 3 scores certain songs with Pro Guitar/Bass parts. There was a discrepancy in how the game dealt with songs using the 17-fret Mustang controller versus the 22-fret Fender Squier controller which resulted in scores posting with no Star values. This has now been resolved with today’s update.

While we don’t have any additional title updates planned for the foreseeable future, we hope this further illustrates our ongoing commitment to supporting the new Pro Guitars as well as you all who make our community so great!

Check below for the full list of affected songs. (note: to avoid redundancies I haven’t listed a song twice if it has an RB3 version in addition to the PRO Upgrade.)

RB3 Disc Songs Affected: 21

• Anthrax — “Caught in a Mosh”
• Avenged Sevenfold — “Beast and the Harlot”
• Big Country — “In a Big Country”
• Def Leppard — “Foolin’”
• Dio — “Rainbow in the Dark”
• Foreigner — “Cold as Ice”
• Jane’s Addiction — “Been Caught Stealing”
• Lynyrd Skynyrd — “Free Bird”
• The Muffs — “Outer Space”
• Night Ranger — “Sister Christian”
• Ozzy Osbourne — “Crazy Train”
• Phish — “Llama”
• Primus — “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver”
• Queen — “Bohemian Rhapsody”
• Queens of the Stone Age — “No One Knows”
• Rilo Kiley — “Portions for Foxes”
• Spacehog — “In the Meantime”
• Them Crooked Vultures — “Dead End Friends”
• Tokio Hotel — “Humanoid”
• Whitesnake — “Here I Go Again”
• Yes — “Roundabout”

DLC Songs Affected: 24

• 38 Special — “Hold On Loosely”
• B.B. King — “The Thrill Is Gone”
• Billy Joel — “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)”
• Bob Marley and the Wailers — “Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)”
• Bon Jovi — “Livin’ on a Prayer”
• Bon Jovi — “Runaway”
• Bon Jovi — “Wanted Dead or Alive”
• Caesars — “Jerk It Out”
• The Doors — “Light My Fire”
• DragonForce — “Through the Fire and Flames”
• The Gracious Few — “Appetite”
• Johnny Cooper — “Don’t Feel Like That Anymore”
• The Knack — “My Sharona”
• Lynyrd Skynyrd — “Simple Man”
• Metallica — “…And Justice for All”
• Queen — “I Want It All”
• Queen — “Killer Queen”
• Queen — “One Vision”
• Queen — “Play the Game”
• Queen — “Somebody To Love”
• Queen — “Tenement Funster”
• Queen — “We Are the Champions”
• Santana — “Black Magic Woman”
• Stone Sour — “Say You’ll Haunt Me”

[RockBand.com]

Earlier this month, I gave a very brief review of the Rock Band 3 Squier, but that was just a taste of what others have been doing with their new Rock Band 3 peripherals. Matt from RBN artist Rose of Jericho gives a MUCH more thorough review of the new peripheral, both from the perspective of a rhythm gamer and from an experienced guitarist. While I’m still slogging through at a snail’s pace on Medium, Matt is gold starring some of the recent Pro Guitar updates, specifically “Dammit” by Blink 182. If you have any interest at all in picking up the Squier, have the Squier now, or just want to watch some cool videos of how the Squier is supposed to be played, check out Matt’s three review videos below!

You can check out the rest of Matt’s videos on his YouTube page, as well as check out his band Rose of Jericho on their website, Facebook, Soundcloud, or CDBaby.