^^ My original guitar seems to be missing notes, too. Well, kinda of. When I first got the game, I quickly did the calibration, thought I had it pretty close, but once I got to medium, I started missing every 7th-9th note in long lines of notes. Drove me crazy! So I went back into calibration and messed around...for what felt like forever....until I didn't miss any of those notes. It took me a while, but I did finally find a calibration that worked. I could get through any series of long notes, and not miss anything.
Then I tried to fix something else, and screwed everything up again! The drum fill sections have always been a off, at least a quarter step, in my game. Meaning, I hit the drum, and the sound comes in after. Totally messes me up in these fill sections...to the point where my rhythm gets thrown waaaay off, and I can't get back into the main parts of the song.
I posted this problem on the Rock Band website, and someone told me how to completely fix my problem: switch audio cables from optical to the standard A/V cables, turn off the surround in the game, change your PSN game from optical 5.1 to AV stereo, and then re-calibrate your game. So I did it, and...Wow, what a difference. Where with my optical connection I had a positive lag of 60, with the standard AV cables, my lag suddenly went down to -10! And the drum fill sections? Pretty much right on. Nice! Anyone know why optical puts such a long delay into the game?
The only problem? Well, now the game doesn't sound as fun. Left/right stereo actually makes a huge difference in sound and gameplay. For one, stereo really narrows down the sound plane...With 5.1, you feel like you're in the middle of the sound...in stereo, you feel further away from the music, and somewhat separated from it. Gameplay-wise, you no longer have the crowd behind you, letting you know how well you're doing by singing along.
Maybe it sounds petty, but I had to switch things back to my optical settings. I missed the 5.1!! The only trouble is, I wasn't completely sure what my calibration settings were! So for about 2 hours, I re-calibrated, and played Paranoid on medium until I hot all the notes again in those long lines of notes. Drove me mental!
(Unlike GH3, to re-calibrate, you can't do it inside a song....you have to keep going waaaay back to the main menu!) Right before I was ready to toss my game out the window, I finally found the setting again. Managed to make it all the way through medium without missing any notes.
Until I got to hard! For whatever reason, I started missing every odd note, again, in long lines of notes. Until!! Until I got the idea to play with a cardboard pick I made out of frustration.
And would you guess, that with this "pick" I don't miss any of those notes, again? Can't figure it out. Maybe I'm just not able to move the strat bar back and forth fast and accurately enough. I mean, it's really not how you'd play a guitar, wiggling the strings back and forth. You play with a pick!
So now I don't know what to think. Is my guitar defective, and I'm just compensating for it? Or is this just the way it's supposed to be? There's another complication. Because I purchased the game in the States, and I'm Canadian, Rockband in the States won't ship across the border. I was told that once the game is released in Canada, that I'd be able to go through them. But I can just see the Canadian support guy telling me he can't help me because the game wasn't bought in Canada. In which case, I will have to try and find someone in the States to help me with an exchange.
Sigh. Sorry for the long post! I just need to get this stuff out, sometimes!
I ended up finding it at Target and had a return so it worked out well.
