Rock Band 2 Drum Pedal Problems?

In this writer’s (very) spare leisure time, I have been known to pound the skins in Rock Band 2 for as long as the rest of the ‘band’ wants to keep going. It should be no surprise then, that I was quite distressed then when my drum pedal quit registering. The breakage issues with the RB1 pedal were well known and the 2nd generation pedals were supposed to have fixed this. And it did, only apparently to a certain degree. While there are no breaks, cracks, loose wires or any other visible signs of damage; the pedal no longer works. It mysteriously quit functioning right in the middle of a set. One song it was working just fine; the next song it simply quit registering. I have not been able to get it to work.

A search of the Rock Band forums returned some troubling results: other users are starting to experience the same pedal failure problem, all within the last few months. Even more worrisome is that some posters have reported that it was not the pedal that was faulty but the drum kit itself. As I am out of the RMA range, I am not too happy with the prospect of investing even more money into the game (curse you DLC!) by having to buy a whole new drum set. So I decided to contact EA’s technical support to see what they would have to say. I acknowledged that I was out of the warranty period with hopes that it would speed the process along. I received two responses: the first one instructing me through the RMA process (d’oh) and the second one simply telling me that I was out of the warranty period (which I had told them in the initial mail). I escalated the question, and asked if I should just wait until this issue grew like the RB1 pedal problem and EA would be forced to acknowledge it. The next response instructed me to send EA my receipt and they would ship me a replacement item. That was good, except it a) did not specify if it is new pedal (which would be pointless if it’s a kit problem) or a whole new set, and b) stated that they are going to verify the date of purchase on the receipt, which means they were going to make sure it was covered by warranty. I politely (which was hard to do) informed them for the third time that I was not covered by the warranty. The last response informed that ‘more time is required for investigation’ and that they would get back to me.

So what now? I guess I will pick up a third party pedal this weekend and see if it works. If not, I’ll go from there. I really do not want to have to purchase a whole RB2 new drum set which will have the same potential problem. Maybe I’ll look into the Guitar Hero: World Tour kit (which is compatible with RB2), or breakdown and purchase the ION set, which has great reviews and would cost me the same as having to purchase two drum sets in the same year. Either way, I will let you know how it works out and what EA’s ‘investigation’ results in.