My foot pedal from the Rock Band drum kit broke in less than a month. EA has a fairly good system setup to get a replacement, but the pedal is just cheap plastic and I’m sure will break again. The first one broke long before I even got to any songs that used the pedal a whole lot. I ordered a pedal from WoodRock Pedals to hopefully make sure it doesn’t break again.

My broken pedal:

Ordering on the website was nice and easy, assuming you have Paypal all set up. It shipped fast, during the holidays, and arrived over a week before my replacement pedal from EA. I went with the basic model, instead of the painted one, because I didn’t need to spend an extra $3, and actually like the way the basic one looks.

Installing the new pedal wasn’t too hard, following their instructions, but there are a few things to mention about it.

First, taking the original apart: Getting the glued-in rubber bumpers out of my original pedal was much more difficult than I was expecting. It took a lot of prying it with a screwdriver, and pulling really hard with pliers. They didn’t end up in great shape, but still good enough to work on the wooden pedal. Also, the magnet on my pedal was glued in; I had to push it out by pushing a screwdriver through the top of the plastic pedal.

Second, putting it back together: The hole for the magnet is a little big. The plastic piece that gets screwed on keeps it in place, but it banged against it from time to time. I will probably eventually glue it in place, but for now I’ve put a small piece of tape over the hole. The screws (from the original pedal) to reattach the retainer to the pedal wouldn’t work for me at all. The holes in the wood were way too small, and they’re not wood screws. I had some appropriately sized wood screws lying around at home, and used those instead. My suggestion would be to do that, and I feel like the WoodRock Pedal should have come with them. UPDATE: I got an email from Chris at Woodrock letting me know that screws are now being included with the pedals they’re sending out. Nice!

So it wasn’t too bad to take the original apart, and put the new one back together. The real test is playing it, and it seems to be holding up very well. It’s also much easier to use, at least for me. It feels much more solid, instead of just some cheap plastic. Overall, I’m very pleased with the purchase and would make it again.

Now, a video, because I felt like using my new toys (camera) and starting to figure out how to do some simple video editing in Linux. 🙂

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2008? Really? How did that happen?

Hopefully, it’ll be better than 2007.

Also, how the hell was CNBC the only place I could watch the ball drop in Times Square live on the west coast? WTF.

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Damn, I want one of these. Don’t know if I want it $220 worth, but it’s close.

Flux Capacitor

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