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PRO Squier Stratocaster - First Impressions (with Tweaking Guide)

 
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Airtrooper719  





Joined: 29 May 2013
Posts: 235
Location: Newcastle, UK

PostPosted: Thu Nov 13, 2014 2:11 pm    Post subject: PRO Squier Stratocaster - First Impressions (with Tweaking G Reply with quote

Just as an introduction, I bought a Mustang over 12 months ago as a cheap alternative to start playing Pro Guitar mode (as an already experienced guitarist), I have for the last few months been looking for an upgrade to the YRG-G2 or Pro Squier.

As you all may be aware the Strat was discontinued years ago (before I even knew that RB3 existed!) so I had to look online and I found one on ebay complete with the MIDI Pro Adaptor for $300 as good as new.

Enough of all that, now lets move onto the comparison. I will not give a first impressions summary on the Mustang because most of you are already aware of how it plays, but I will compare it later in the post....

Pro Stratocaster First Impressions
-----------------------------------------

Monday morning a man with a giant box slung over his shoulders knocks on my door and it is my Pro Strat guitar being delivered by Parcel Force.

I couldn't get to the door any quicker, and I was just as quick to unpack everything and plug it in for my first play test.

I load RB3 up for the first time with the guitar resting on my leg, I almost felt like I was starting up rocksmith, but it only occured to me im finally going to get to play and beat scores on all my favourite songs, only this time with a full scale neck, and real strings that I can tighten and loosen to my preference!!

My first thoughts were the usual, switching on my Indiv. Track Speeds and Chord Numbering modifiers, followed by a quick tune up in the calibration to make sure my game was in sync to my equipment, then I moved into the Song List.

First Song
-----------------------

I figured it would be best to test the capabilities of the Strat before I properly started to use it, so I loaded up "Get Free" by "The Vines" which has a nice easy riff on the A string followed by a bunch of powerchords. This is a song I will rarely NOT get an FC on with the Mustang unless I really did mis-pick a note.

I instantly went from a huge smile on my face to a major disappointment literally within the first 10 notes of the song, despite the game being calibrated, and having fully charged batteries installed, it had dropped approximately 40% of those 10 notes......!!!!

I tried again and again and again with varying pick attacks, and I never ever managed to streak the 10 notes, at this point, I almost felt like I had been robbed of $300 for a novelty item that doesnt work properly.....

Next Steps
-----------------------

I played a few of my favourite full songs from start to end, and I never made a 5 star (these are songs I mostly gold star or FC on the mustang) you are going to have to take my word for it, it was entirely because of the guitars mechanics and not my playing style (or because I was used to the mustang)

I got so fed up that I switched off RB3 and never played it again for 3 days, infact I was glad, I went back and played Halo 3 for the first time in god knows how long with my Mrs and it was good fun!

Anyway moving on........

3 Days Later
----------------------

After my wife and I had our 3 day long Halo 3 session (getting our behinds raped by all the MLG kids) I wanted to wind down and play some music on RB3, and over the days I started thinking to myself of all the little things I can do to tweak this guitar, or how I can really figure out what is causing all those dropped notes.

The Workbench
----------------------

At this point I thought theres no way I can play the guitar unless I can improve its playability in-game so I set aside 3 hours of my day to get to the bottom of the issues. Instead of rambling on too much in sentence form I am now going to break everything into small bullet-point chunks for easier reading (I will probably expand on some of the points so you can understand it better).


Pro Strat - switched on and connected to RB3
Midi Adaptor - switched on and synced with the Strat
Battery Bay - opened
RB3 - loaded into practice mode, easy, 70% speed, hey man nice shot (this gives you a lot of "free" fretboard space in game on that intro to check your string sensitivities).
Toolbox - at the ready


Baring in mind all these tweaks took me the good part of 2 days to finally get right, but I am just getting to the points:

Before carrying on, I found that the magnetic pull of the humbucker registers your strings BEST when tuned to "Half-step down". It isn't very good with A440 standard because the tension is so high, there isn't enough sound being produced by the strings. By having them at (Eb Ab Db Gb Bb Eb) there is a good balance between string tension, and sonic output per string (giving better magnetic pull between the string and pickup which registers each string)

String Sensitivity - In order to tweak these correctly I found that you MUST do the following (it does take a while, but is well worth the effort, trust me)

#In the battery compartment there is a small cover which contains 6x Potentiometer Screws, each of these controls the amount of resistance to the output, in otherwords, the more resistance on a string, the HARDER your going to have to pick the string#

To DECREASE sensitivity (require a heavier pick attack) - Turn screw CLOCKWISE (righty-tighty)

To INCREASE sensitivity (require lighter pick attacks) - Turn screw COUNTERCLOCKWISE (lefty-loosy)

Because these guitars are not configured before they are packed in indonesia or wherever it was, all strings have a dramatic change in sensitivity, this is why you will notice certain strings are hard to detect notes hit, or not hit at all.

The first step is to get all the "pots" to the maximum resistance, in otherwords, you are going to roll off (clockwise) every string until it no longer works even with the heaviest pick attack/strum.

Use the song I mentioned above to check that the string isn't moving in-game when you pick it hard.

Once you have ensured ALL strings are defunct now you MUST (This plays a HUGE part in hit detection upon testing different distances):

Raise the pickup almost as far as it can go (there are 2x screws adjacent the humbucker, you want to make sure there is only a enough of a gap between the pickup and the strings, that you can JUST fit a medium sized plectrum beneath

Now this is the lengthy but the god-almighty hit detection solution, the goal is to alternate pick at a steady tempo the low E string (your pick MUST be positioned directly on top of the pickup for this part), and (this part is tricky, I found sitting down helps to balance the guitar) at the same time gently start to screw the low E potentiometer COUNTER CLOCKWISE, at this point as you are keeping a steady beat with your picking hand you will need to concentrate on-screen on the practice track, once you pass a certain amount of turns you will see the string start to kick into gear, but if you look closely and pay attention, it will still miss certain strokes, for example, mine was the upstrokes. Keep turning gently until you see the string registering ALL down and up strokes without any undue physical effort on your picking hand. Now DO NOT be tempted to over do it yet, just leave it to where it JUST starts registering down and upstrokes at a nice gentle pick attack

Repeat this process for all strings.

Now, we need to eliminate CROSS-TALK...this is the MAIN cause for dropped single notes on the pro guitar. NOTE from now on, your pick MUST be positioned in the middle of the string area and not above the pickup like it was before.... between the pickup and the string mute (the usual position you would pick with your palm rested on the bridge)

Now that all strings are now configured to your pick intensity we need to see just how far we can push the pots before it starts to introduce crosstalk, so that we can get as much registration out of each string as possible....

DO NOT adjust the low E string yet, this will not be affected by crosstalk for obvious reasons, so in this case, move straight to the A string.

Place your screwdriver into the pot for the A string, and start picking the low E string (at what you believe to be your main pick attack for single note riffs. Now ever so gently start rolling the pot COUNTER-CLOCKWISE to increase sensitivity, maintaining youir picking intensity, and STOP rolling as soon as you see the next string playing out on-screen. At this point make a full turn to the right (clockwise) and move onto the next string.

Adjust in the following manner:

Pick the A string while adjusting the D string
Pick the D string while adjusting the G string
Pick the G string while adjusting the B string
Pick the B string while adjusting the E string

Now to finalise the sensitivity checks,

Pick all strings once at your normal pick attack and ensure they all ring out (without the next string ringing out as a double stop), try both downstrokes AND upstrokes.

Start to play double-stops, 2 strings at once running up to the high E and back down.

Play 3 strings at once, make sure that only those 3 strings are ringing out and not less or more.

Strum all strings at an average strum attack, both down and upstrums, make sure that 99% of the time, at least 5 of the 6 strings "bounced" on the screen in practice mode.

Now your nearly good to go.

Now here is something you may not want to do if you also use the Squier as a guitar to play (I personally don't, it really does suck as a guitar, so Im using it solely as a guitar controller for rockband), but it does make all the difference. Jam a piece of card underneath the string mute, you will notice it flaps about when your picking, especially the low and high strings, making the strings unstable and you can often lose your swing when alternate picking for example. By jamming the cardboard piece into one of the gaps it makes the string mute stiff and stops it moving about when playing, this made a HUGE difference also for me.

Finally I made a couple of truss rod and bridge adjustments to help give a smoother action, this is personal preference, it didnt make any difference to the game, but it does make playing more enjoyable.

Ever since doing all the above, I have since FC'd numerous songs (Expert Pro Guitar), including "In the Meantime" which I never managed to FC on the Mustang. Every song I have played since has been flawless, and finally I went back to Get Free by The Vines..... another 100% FC for the entire song :)

I am now extremely happy with my Pro guitar and hope that this guide can ignite the love for other people with their strats. I know most of my friends have a pro strat gathering dust, simply because it doesnt work properly, but little do they know, if you perservere and put a little time into doing the above, it will play 10 times better and more enjoyable than the Mustang!!!

I mainly play with a Tortex T3 0.88mm (Green) pick and sometimes (on the strummy stuff like "Have You Ever Seen The Rain Again" or "Killing Moon" a 0.73 Tortex T3 (Yellow) pick, so I would recommend using anything within that gauge range. Lighter gauge picks will produce less of a "click" on the strings so will make it harder to register. Those celluloid Fender ones that are provided with both the mustang and squier kits are crap so I would recommend ditching them.

Congratulations if you made it to the end of this post!
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ricecake  





Joined: 17 May 2007
Posts: 1890
Location: Linthicum Heights, MD

PostPosted: Mon Nov 17, 2014 6:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks for this. It's been a while since I've played pro guitar but I was getting frustrated with some aspects of it, especially the string sensitivity. I knew about the adjustments but have been too lazy to actually tweak them, but your guide has a good procedure to follow. Have you tried adjusting the sensitivity so you can play without having to use the string mute?
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