Guitars of the Rising Sun

"Hey," I remember saying. "You know what would be cool? Let's paint the X-Plorer controllers that come with Guitar Hero II like the ones in the game and give them away as prizes."

Famous last words. The contest we announced with the exclusive review of Guitar Hero II took an unusually long time to fulfill...but then again, it was an unusual contest. The gang at RedOctane supplied us with five brand new guitar controllers and said "Go to town." I took them to Greg at Orbiter Guitars to have them customized. (Readers may recall Greg's fancy work on 360 faceplates for a DIY feature in OXM back in 2006). Greg -- himself a big fan of the classic Colin McRae rally games -- was up for the challenge, but he's also a busy guy. He literally has working bands dropping by saying "I need this guitar fixed and this guitar set up and this guitar repaired because I'm going on tour, um, tomorrow." So understandably, the 360 controllers took a bit of a back seat over the summer and Greg got to them as he could. Thankfully, the winners were patient about it; they realized they were getting something special when the waiting was over.

Some say patience is its own reward, but I think these are even better:

Greg disassembled each controller, primed them, taped them off in the design from the game, painted them with Dakota Red and Olympic White -- two classic Fender Stratocaster paint finishes! -- and stuck 'em back together. Someone had to test them, so I did the obligatory "failed 'Less Talk More Rokk' on Expert" run with each to make sure they worked before packing them up and sending them out.

Funny thing, though. The fifth guitar wasn't quite done when I picked up the other four, which turned out to be fine because one of the winners never claimed their prize. I tried to contact the winner a few times over a six-month period but I guess I was getting caught in their spam filter, or they'd changed email addresses and didn't bother to forward anything from the old account. They left no other form of contact but an email address, and our rules state that if we can't get in touch with you, we have to reassign the prize. So that's what we did. I feel bad for the person who lost out, but what can we do? They'll never know what they almost had. (Let this be a lesson...always enter a contest with your FULL contact info.)

Anyway, I am happy with how they turned out. I was somewhat jealous of the winners; I wanted to keep that unclaimed one in the office, but out they all went. (Greg's cooking up something special for my own X-Plorer controller, but that's for another post.) So far I haven't seen any of the prizes show up on eBay -- and I hope I never do!