I cannot use the RB guitar. They really should have stuck with Red Octane for the equipment because they clearly knew what they were doing. The button structure is uncomfortable and just does not feel solid like the GH guitars. The "solo" buttons on the bottom are almost useless because it feels weird to throw up your guitar to try and emulate what guitar people do with solos. The whammy bar feels weird. Finally, I don't know if this is from my guitar or if this is standard, but the strumming bar feels too loose. When you strum it feels like its broken because it is so "weak."
I feel bad for you PS3 owners who can't use GH guitars, but you need to look at this from Activision's point of view. Activision has created a guitar system that is proprietary. IT is not like 360 where they all use the same system. There are two different technologies being used, each one created by the respective companies. For RB to just release a version without consulting with GH is not good business sense. RB clearly did not consult with GH before developing this patch. GH has a vested interest in cross compatibility. They need to know how this thing works and if there are any bugs that may affect GH's functionality. If you were a guy who wrote a major computer program for Windows XP, and then someone came around and converted its functionality to be able to work with Windows Vista, you would definitely want to consult and talk to this Vista developer to see how it did it and ways to make sure that everything works correctly. Are you just going to take the Vista developers WORD that everything is Kosher? "Oh, I have no idea what you did to get your program to do this, but I'll just take your word on it and allow all development and support to go directly through you."
This is almost the equivalent of Nintendo making a fully functional controller for the PS3 and trying to release it without Sony's consent. I admire RB's belief in an open standard, but simply pushing for that does not always work in the real world. GH needs to evaluate how this move affects them and their business.
Also, this is a great PR move for RB. Now they can go and say, "Oh. We WANT the GH guitars to work with our game, but GH is being a bunch of jerks and not allowing us to!" Yeah they say that, but now they can capitalize and force all people to buy the RB guitars instead.
If RB REALLY cared about the players they would just suck it up and work with GH towards making a patch that both of them could agree with. It is not like RB doesn't have the money to do so. Last I checked MTV and EA were throwing $500 million towards the post development of this game. I'm sure they could put some of that towards a license fee. Both these companies need to stop playing the sympathy card and stop pointing fingers and just work together to get this s**t fixed.