Guitar Mania Freedom V Wireless Guitar Controller

I purchased this close to the release of the critically anticipated Guitar Hero II game. I bought the WIRED blue V controller. I took it home and was immediately impressed with the cool look of a metallic blue flying V guitar controller, with a chrome strum bar! That's about where the excitement ended.

The first thing I noticed was when I strapped it on and sat down to play my game. My arm rested very uncomfortably on the lower point of the guitar. In order for it to be comfortable, I had to rest my arm in the notch of the V and then I had the problem of resting my palm on the SELECT button, which continually activated the "star power" in the game.

So I decided to stand up and lower the guitar into a normal position and the SECOND problem arose. Because of the poor engineering of the controller, the top strap button is facing you when you are standing. This created an immediate problem when I started to play, and the strap became undone at the neck. This was repeatable and very easily done, not much pressure at all released the strap from the button. With no way to lock the strap in place, the button became unusable. So I tried to put the strap on the button that is directly across the neck, but this put the guitar in a weird position.

Finally my THIRD problem with the controller. I purchased the PSM magazine with the Guitar Hero II demo disc to see how the new game would look. My sweet flying V controller wasn't even recognized by the demo. This made me frightful that it would also not be recognized in the actual game, making the new controller utterly useless.

I returned the controller to the store and got a credit for the game with the OEM GH2 controller bundle. Glad I did too.

Other problems included moderate to poor build quality, sticky buttons and a strum bar that would catch on something internal to the mechanism.

STAY AWAY FROM THIS CONTROLLER IF YOU CARE ABOUT THE FINER POINTS OF ELECTRONICS.