Power Gig: Rise of the SixString Guitar Shot 1

The special guitar that is being developed for Power Gig: ROTSS is a fully functioning real electric guitar produced by First Act (company known for making beginner-level musical instruments). It is 2/3 the size of a normal electric and uses a special string dampener that will hold the strings in place to prevent them from actually ringing out during gameplay. The dampener can be removed and the guitar will function like a normal electric guitar when plugged into an amplifier.

In-game, the guitar will have two modes. On the neck of the guitar are colored frets similar to Guitar Hero and Rock Band. In the normal mode, colored frets will appear onscreen and you have to play that fret on any string. In advanced mode, the colored frets will also include a number telling you which string you have to play. It isn't nearly as advanced as Rock Band 3's Pro Guitar mode, but it is certainly a step up from typical plastic instrument music games.

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SixString Guitar Review

Rock Band 3 is getting all of the attention, but there is already a videogame on the market that works with a real six string guitar in Power Gig: Rise of the SixString. We take a look at First Act's SixString guitar in this hardware review.

Hardware Details

The SixString is a 3/4 size (the size you'd get a kid for their first practice guitar), plastic body, single humbucker pickup, six string electric guitar. It uses a unique two part tailpiece and bridge assembly that does offer some limited adjustability on bridge height, but not intonation. It has 19 frets and a short 14 1/2" scale. The neck is a bit on the thick side, despite being a 3/4 size axe. Seriously, it is slightly thicker than the neck on my full size Les Paul. Presumably it is thick because of the videogame controller gadgetry in the neck to make it touch sensitive. That gadgetry has another effect, though, in that it makes the guitar extremely neck heavy. Expect it to nose dive towards the ground if you ever let go of the neck while you play.

The tuners are par for the course for lower end guitars, which means they don't offer a ton of precision, but you can get it dialed in fairly well. And I haven't had any problem with them coming out of tune, which is a good sign.

Because it is also a videogame controller, there is a special block that raises up and down where you'd usually find a pickup on a normal guitar that serves to hold the strings and keep them from vibrating when you play a game. It doesn't get in the way of the strings vibrating when it is down, and does a good job holding the strings in place when it is up.

Extra Strings

The guitar comes with three heavy picks and one set of replacement strings for the G,B,E strings (the thin ones). Extra six string replacement sets will be available at retailers that are pre-cut to the right length for the guitar, but they cost about $12 a set. I recommend just buying standard "light" strings (about 9-42's or so) for less than $4 a pack instead.

How Does It Sound?

Unplugged, the guitar sounds just like you'd expect. It sounds like a plastic hollow body guitar. Kind of like a ukulele. Plugged into an amplifier, however, (I used a Line 6 Spider IV 75) it actually sounds pretty decent when you use some distortion. Clean settings through an amp sound like I mentioned above (like a plastic hollow body guitar). Distortion muddies things up enough that it sounds halfway decent. A friend of mine who has played guitar for 10+ years picked it up and was fairly impressed when I switched the amp to the "Master of Puppets" setting and let him wail away. So, basically, sound through an amplifier isn't terrible. Plus 1 for the SixString.

How Does It Play?

Playability is a little suspect on the SixString, however, because it isn't very adjustable. The strings are crazy, crazy high off the fret board, and even though the bridge does offer some adjustability thanks to two screws you can use to raise and lower the action (string height), the pickup is also set insanely high so if you lowered the strings down enough to where it was actually comfortable to play they would hit the pickup (which is a BAD thing). On a normal guitar, this would be okay since you'd just lower the pickup height via a couple of screws. You can't do that with the SixString, at least not in an easy, accessible way because there are no screws to adjust. It is just hard mounted in a plastic shell that pokes through the top of the guitar. You might be able to take the back off the body and adjust it from inside, but I'm not keen on risking breaking the thing by trying.

Update On Pickup Adjustment Possibilities - Thanks to one of our readers, Ryan W, who was brave enough to actually take his SixString guitar apart, it seems like modifying the pickup on the SixString will be a lot more trouble than it is worth. He found that a long metal bar runs the length of the guitar, from the nut all the way to the tail, and the pickup is underneath that bar, which means there isn't any room to reposition the current pickup. You could replace the pickup, presumably (though I'm not 100% sure on the role, if any, the pickup plays in the gameplay aspect so you might not be able to replace it at all), but it looks like it would take a lot of work. When fixing your "fake" guitar is more work than doing the same thing to a real guitar (and, believe me, putting a new pickup in a real guitar isn't nearly as involved as it looks like it would be on the SixString) it just isn't going to be worth the effort. Oh well, thanks a lot to Ryan for giving me a much more definitive answer on this matter!

Why String Height Matters

When strings are too high it makes a guitar more difficult to play because you have to push the strings down harder and further on the frets to get a clear sound. Low strings let you play faster and easier, which is why most rock guitarists prefer low action even if they do get some fret buzz (which is covered up by distortion so you don't notice it). Lets do some math. This guitar sounds best with distortion. Distortion generally means rock or metal music. Guitar can't have low enough action to be played comfortably for rock or metal music. Thus, the guitar can't really play the only type of music it actually sounds good for. Uh oh. I'm not saying it is impossible to get used to and play, but for me the action is about twice as high as my normal guitars, which isn't a good thing.

We have more information on how the SixString functions as a videogame controller on the next page.

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