You Rock Guitar

I want to share with everyone my experience with the You Rock Guitar http://www.yourockguitar.com/ This device is a Midi interface or stand alone guitar which works nearly perfectly.  I use it in conjunction with software synthesizers and my favorite is the East/West Gypsy. The YRG has a tap mode where you can play all notes just by touch alone.  That isn't as easy as it sounds and the YRG is a bit tweaky getting the sensitivity set correctly, particularly the string tension (actually metal wire that is tensioned correctly). But, once it is set up it is great.  One nice thing is that there is a mini-USB connector which is used to upload and download and additionally serves as the Midi interface.  That normally works perfectly but in my case, the USB fell off due to a poor soldering job at the factory.  I wrote them and got pretty much nothing in return as it was more than 1 years old so I decided to manually re-solder the mini-USB back onto the interface circuit board.  Having nothing here except a butane fired gas soldering iron I was able to do it correctly and it worked finr for a couple of weeks.  But now it is wonky again, probably due to a broken solder weld again,.  This is a poorly designed part as it is a high stress port given most people will play using the USB Midi function which means a cord is permanently attached to the USB port and playing is a bit stressful on the soldered junction for such a small part.  Anyway, today I received an email (after 6 weeks) from YRG that they will ship me a new interface port free of charge.  That is great customer service and I am very happy that they decided to help me.  My next move was to solder on a new cable instead of the miniport which would be a lot stronger and perhaps easier in the long run.  If the new board fails that is what I will do.  I have been playing a lot with the YRG and in particular I have been dabbling with Rimsky-Korsikov's Scheherazade and using the East/West Gypsy synthesizer it is awesome!!! East/West makes some great software but unfortunately requires an iLok device to function.  That would have been very expensive for me here in Hungary but I got one from China for $6 and it works fine.  The software was 1/2 price and I got that here as well without paying customs so it was a great bargain for a wonderful, if overpriced, piece of software. I can't praise both the YRG and the Gypsy software enough.