Rock Band Controllers. Oh what a waste of a question.

November 27, 2007 11:57 AM

My copy of Rock Band is arriving soon. Is it possible to make one of my existing PS2 Guitar Hero guitars work with it?

Last generation I used a converter like this to get my PS2 controllers onto my X-Box for backup controllers and they worked fine. None of the converters I see say anything about 360 compatibility, but the connectors are the same across generations, just some button layout changes. Wikipedia says the package comes with a USB hub-- would a PS2 to USB converter box (like the ones for using the guitars in Windows) do the trick?

I'll accept being lame and having laid out too much money for these games, but I'd like to skip having a 4th guitar lying around.

posted by yerfatma to sports, hobbies, & recreation (14 comments total)

Nope, no love there. It's been tried and doesn't work.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 12:50 PM on November 27, 2007

Yeah, so far everything I've seen has said no joy.

But it's a beautiful opportunity to expand the axe collection. I've got one you wouldn't believe the sustain on. It just goes on and on.
posted by empyrean at 1:07 PM on November 27, 2007

The Rock Band guitars are terribly made, my brother's strum bar broke after a day. It's hardly an isolated incident either.


The Les Paul that comes with GH3 is pretty fantastic though, if you need a reason to pick up both.
posted by Oktober at 1:30 PM on November 27, 2007

Apparently the Pelican adapter works with Guitar Hero 1, but not 2.
posted by teki at 2:43 PM on November 27, 2007

I haven't played Rock Band, but I have read through the manual for it. Apparently a pretty important part of the game takes place with a second set of the five buttons closer to the base of the guitar (to emulate Eddie Van Halen-esque finger-tapping, I guess), which obviously your GH guitar won't have.

Someone with the game could probably enlighten a little bit, but it seems - like always - like you need to buy something new.
posted by Ufez Jones at 3:22 PM on November 27, 2007

Ufez, the guitar for guitar hero can be used as the bass in that game, not as a lead guitar.

I imagine any converter would be price prohibitive anyway. You can get one used on craigslist or your local ebgames for not that much.
posted by damn dirty ape at 3:57 PM on November 27, 2007

I haven't played Rock Band, but I have read through the manual for it

Thanks for out-losering me, buddy.
posted by yerfatma at 4:32 PM on November 27, 2007 [3 favorites has favorites]

Apparently a pretty important part of the game takes place with a second set of the five buttons closer to the base of the guitar (to emulate Eddie Van Halen-esque finger-tapping, I guess), which obviously your GH guitar won't have.

Happily, use of the "solo button" frets is perfectly optional - you can continue using the standard buttons during solos, if you so wish. As such, both the old X-plorer controller and the sleek new GH3 Les Paul controller are perfectly viable controllers for the 360. Not that this helps with the original poster's PS2-guitars' compatibility issues any, admittedly.

(Between switching systems and making sure that co-op play is always on tap, we're up to seven fake guitars at this point. This is impressive and/or sad.)
posted by youhas at 5:40 PM on November 27, 2007

I haven't played Rock Band, but I have read through the manual for it

Thanks for out-losering me, buddy.

Hey, I was at a client's place who happened to have the game and I had the unctrollable urge to take a shit. You should feel lucky to benefit what little I gained from those precious 4 minutes.
posted by Ufez Jones at 8:56 PM on November 27, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Your bowels are a wonderland.
posted by yerfatma at 4:39 AM on November 28, 2007

So, do you have any tips for beating 'Your Bowels Are a Wonderland' in Expert Mode?
posted by box at 6:13 AM on November 28, 2007

Carbo load.
posted by yerfatma at 9:34 AM on November 28, 2007

I'm not clear here- you had an original XBox on it, and were able to use a PS2 controller on it for GH1/2 using a USB adapter? Now, you have a 360, and want to use a similar controller for Rockband... am I understanding correctly?

Not sure if that will work, but we know this much:
1) GH2 and GH3 controllers are compatible with Rockband, but not vice versa (the Rockband stratocaster, which I like, isn't compatible with GH2/3). So if you already were able to use a PS2 controller in GH2/3 for the 360... you're probably going to be okay.
2) The PS2/3 guitar controller is not compatible with the PS3 version of Rockband (no idea why) for which there is no solution.

So if you can make an existing PS2 controller work on your 360 with a usb adapter for the guitar hero games, then it should ostensibly work in Rockband because of the commutative property. :)

A quick search found this thread at gamespot; sounds like people have gotten a PS2 controller working with GH3 on the 360, so it may be technically possible with some effort. But look at the fifth post down, from jeneki; apparently the conversion causes enough lag the game had to be seriously recalibrated (180ms, which is huge in a rhythm game). That might throw off the other players using native devices, like drums.

So my guess is, it may very well work (PS2 guitar + usb convertor for Xbox 360 in GH3/Rock Band) but you might face significant lag issues.

The community/forum at rockband.com is pretty useful for hardware issues, you should check there as well.
posted by hincandenza at 1:47 PM on November 28, 2007

you had an original XBox on it, and were able to use a PS2 controller on it for GH1/2 using a USB adapter?

Almost, I kind of ran things together: I had used PS2 controllers on an original XBox after buying a short converter cable that turned the male end of the PS2 controller into an XBox end (not USB). I do have a GH2 guitar for PS2, but I'm not sure it's worth it, given the link. Besides, then I'd have to make 3 friends.
posted by yerfatma at 3:58 PM on November 28, 2007