I Broke My Rock Band Bass Drum Pedal
Posted by Keith Elder | Posted in PC Gaming | Posted on 10-02-2008
I hate when things break. When I was a child growing up my Father always told me, “Boy, you can tear up an anvil”. Well Dad, today I tore something else up. Something that meant the world to me. Something that made the time warp continuum disrupt. My Rock Band bass foot pedal broke. The weird thing is I have no idea how this happened. I played Rock Band this morning for about 30 minutes and then slid the drum kit back out of the way. I then took a shower and went to town and came back.
Fast forward to a few hours ago and my wife said, “Hey, let’s play Rock Band.”. I politely obliged her and reached for the drum kit. As soon as I moved it I noticed the pedal was broken. How could this be?! I have no idea how this got broken but it did. Here is what it looks like.
As you can tell it is completely broke at the base and obviously pointing in the wrong direction.
The first thing I did was try to get a replacement. After all the unit is under warranty. After going through a whole bunch of web sites I finally found where I needed to be. Turns out that Electronic Arts does the warranty for Rock Band, not Harmonix. Here’s the link you need to get support for Rock Band.
http://support.ea.com/cgi-bin/ea.cfg/php/enduser/rockband.php
The site requires that you have an EA account, if you don’t have one, you’ll have to create one. There are two ways to get a replacement: express or standard. Express is done by shipping a replacement item which requires a credit card. I chose this option since it is faster. Yet another reason to own an American Express card.
After ordering my replacement I started looking for ways to keep this from happening again. It seems there are plenty of ways to make the foot pedal stronger. There are metal replacements and wood replacements available from either Amazon or Ebay. For example this one is called the Pedal Metal – Billet.
Basically it is an aluminum plate that replaces the plastic one. It definitely should last longer. I plan on waiting until I get the new pedal in to see if it is made any better before deciding to upgrade it. In the mean time, I am back to playing Guitar until it comes in.
very thank
To anyone that has sent in for the warranty, is it worth it? Is the pedal they send you just as bad as the first? I’m considering modifying a real bass pedal or simply buying one, such as Rock Pedal.
After much research, I decided to spring for a pedal that has NO plastic parts at all, and is made from a REAL bass pedal by Pulse. The bottomline: after several weeks of use, I’m really glad I spent the extra money. I recommend giving the Rock Pedal a try:
http://www.sell.com/24585T
Mine broke after a week of having it lol, it really sucks :S Im not sure whats happening it says New RMA or something lol well hope it all gets sorted out 🙂 Dont really see how it broke so quickly but as I can tell from looking at the pedal there is a obvious flaw with it.
This sucks so much,
I wanted rockband as a present for my birthday,
And this meant alot since I hadn’t asked my parents for anything big in awhile,
I was quite upset when I found out I had to wait a few days to get my present,
When I got it, I was in Nirvana (despite im catholic)
Now I even got Microsoft points which are very overpriced, to get some songs,
I download Mr. Brightside, one of my favorite songs ever, and just when I get the hang of the song which I was struggling at it breaks.
I dont think I want to go outside anymore.
Or you could not worry about a warranty and buy an all metal one. I broke the oniginal rb1 pedal, the rb2 pedal and a rhythm maker pedal. instead of dealing with all that i built my own out of wood.
happened to me aswell! exactly the same place as in the image. really annoying!
hey, this tech support thing for the warranty, do they only do that if you bought rock band recently? like 2 months? i’ve only had it for about 9 months now.
I’m currently in the process of becoming a real drummer, and I play rock band. I’m surprised mine has lasted as long as it did, but it’s just now starting to break. I’ve had the thing for nearly a year now, and I’ve played quite a bit.
I guess My point is that there were not made properly. any real drummer would have broken the thing when using the correct method of how to hit the bass pedal.
I’m going to try the butter knife method this weekend, I’ve heard that it works, so why not?
I broke mine, so i just got 4 butter knives and reinforced the pedal itself using the knives and gorilla tape. it seems pretty darn sturdy now
The Same exact thing happend to me i was playing rockband and i just broke i dont even press it down hard
There’s a bunch out there. If you do a google or a search at amazon.com you can see a listing.
My kids broke theirs about a week ago and ended up buying one from a company called PedalMasters. I got it from their website http://www.pedalmasters.com.
I saw the others but they seemed to be like a bunch of guys working out of their basement, the seem to be associated by FYE and appeared to be more legitimate and closer to a real company. Plus, my kids like the different colors. Go figure?
Nonetheless, good post, pointed me in the right direction.
Thanks for some of the upfront leg work
I broke mine last night at about one in the morning. i was very annoyed to say the least. thanks for all the great help!
Whew #4 in google and saved me a bunch of hunting around….mine broke 10 minutes ago and i was livid…..thanks for the info…I did mine normal instead of express and I can let you know how long it takes if you want
thanx again
check these guys out, my friends bought one of these upgrade pedals and said it is much better quailty, and you will do better on the game. these guys have great pricing http://www.greatmusicproductsonline.com go to their search and just punch in ‘roadie’
Thanks for the information….I was so excited to find this information.
I did the same thing as you, and am waiting my new pedal.
You were very valuable to me today!
THANKS!!!
http://www.valuepedal.com
– everyone else is not shipping til aug. they have some in stock.
Is it even worth going through EA? I just snapped mine and am thinking of just replacing the pedal with an eBay aftermarket option.
I did get my replacement. It took about a week and a few days to get it. As far as did it cover it I assume it did, they sent me one and I shipped mine back.
have you gotten your replacement yet? And did the warranty cover a snapped pedal? We had the same thing happen (almost)! I just don’t want to end up paying $125 on my credit card because snapping isn’t covered. But I can’t seem to talk to a live person yet.
“Yet another reason to own an American Express card.”
Wouldn’t a debit card work just as well?
I learned in college the drummers spend a ton of mony to build their kit, then spend a ton of money fixing all the little do-dads that break on it. I had one drummer who broke two cymbals in one week!
Blame Canada