The Shredder
$29.99 at www.theguitarmania.com

The Shredder was the first third-party Guitar Hero controller we saw surface, and it's still the cheapest. It's black, with a silver neck and a distorted body shape that looks like a strat painted by Salvador Dali and doesn't hang quite as comfortably as you'd expect. The Shredder is also tiny, its neck being a good five inches shorter in length than the standard SG controller's. For comparison, the Shredder's green button is almost exactly where the normal controller's orange button is.

The fret buttons are flatter than on the SG, and they're also turned around, so the curved edge faces upward, but they're still easy to hit. One thing that we did notice is that the buttons wiggle quite a bit in their sockets when pressed, as if the bottom edges were slightly bowed, almost like the rails of a rocking chair - our best guess is that the holes the buttons go into have just a little too much room in them.

The flipper was very loose, but we actually didn't mind that at all. The whammy bar was fine, and the Start and Select buttons were in the same place, but Start was recessed so that it didn't stick up - thus making us less likely to accidentally hit it while violently attempting to sing the words to "Trogdor" and play at the same time.

Ultimately, the Shredder is vastly inferior to the standard SG - spend the extra ten bucks if you possibly can. Also, if you do have an older Shredder, be aware that you might need an adaptor - available at www.theguitarmania.com for $7 - to play Guitar Hero II. If your guitar came in red or blue packaging and the serial number is lower than 2806TPA or 2806TPB, you'll need it. Otherwise, the buttons will get all confused. But, if you've bought after October 01, 2006, you should be fine.