Ever since Fortnite Festival debuted back in 2023, it’s been feeling like guitar-based rhythm games were poised for a comeback. The CRKD Gibson Les Paul Guitar Controller really drives that home, joining several other plastic guitar controllers that have hit the market since Festival added support for them. And it doesn’t seem like that train is stopping any time soon.
But while last year’s PDP Riffmaster revitalized the market just by being a plastic guitar that you could actually buy new, the CRKD Guitars feel like a step into what the future of rhythm games might actually look like – complete with RGB lighting and a mobile companion app that’s only a little bit annoying. This feels like the beginning of an actual rhythm game renaissance.
Design and Features
CRKD brought on some folks who worked on the old Guitar Hero controllers to design these Gibson Les Paul designs, and that’s immediately apparent right out of the box. Especially with the Black Tribal Encore Edition, which is essentially the Guitar Hero III controller, just with RGB lighting and a spiffy embossed design on the body. There’s also a Blueberry Burst Pro Edition that has a gorgeous blue colorway with gold and silver accents.
Both guitars are the same size, measuring 29.5 inches long, and 1.38 inches thick at their thickest point. Each guitar also has a removable neck, which you’ll have to attach when you take it out of the box the first time. Luckily, you just slide it in and it’ll lock in place, then there’s a button you can hold down to slide it back out. The button is a little tough to press the first few times you mess with it, but that’s probably for the best, as it makes it less likely they’ll detach on accident.
But the reason this detachable design is huge for these CRKD guitars is that the necks can be swapped out at will. You see, the two editions use different button styles for the fret buttons: The Encore Edition uses the same kind of membrane switches found on traditional guitar hero controllers. However, the Pro Edition comes with mechanical switches that feel much better. CRKD of course sells the necks separately, so you can ‘upgrade’ your Encore Edition to one with the mechanical frets.
You’d think that if you want the mechanical frets you could just get the Pro guitar and not fool with upgrading, but the strum bar is actually different between the two guitars as well. While the Encore Edition uses the same mechanical ‘clicky’ strum bar as classic Guitar Hero controllers, the Pro switches things up – literally – with a haptic strum bar. What this means in practice is that, using CRKD’s mobile app, you can dial in the actuation point for the strum bar, making it as sensitive as you need it to be. But perhaps more strikingly, you can customize how much feedback you get when you strum. That’s right, the strum bar vibrates as you strum.
Anyone that’s played a lot of these plastic guitar games in the past knows that there was this strict divide between the “Guitar Hero” feel and the “Rock Band” feel for strum bars, with the latter being much mushier and quieter. The haptic strum bar on the Blueberry Burst edition actually puts it somewhere in the middle, with customization moving it closer to either extreme based on your preference. In the couple of weeks I’ve spent with these guitars, I definitely grew to prefer the haptic strum bar, but the clicky strum bar is incredibly nostalgic, and I could see Guitar Hero faithfuls really preferring it.
The buttons that aren’t typically associated with a guitar controller are also notable. You get a D-Pad embedded up at the head of the guitar, which makes it super easy (in theory) to navigate menus. The joysticks are even more fascinating: up on the top left corner of the guitar, you have something that looks like a pickup switch, but it actually acts as the left joystick. Surrounding that is every face button typically found on an Xbox controller – this is particularly useful in Fortnite Festival, but more on that later.
There’s also a button labeled “CTRL” next to the strum bar. When you’re actually playing, this will activate Overdrive, if you don’t feel like tilting the guitar upwards. However, you can also hold the button down for a few seconds, which will allow it to pair with the CRKD app on your phone.
Beneath the strum bar are what look like two dials, however the one closest to the bottom of the controller is actually your right joystick. The other one acts as the power button and a mode switch. Both guitar controllers come pre-programmed with five presets. The first one, which is ‘1’ on this dial, makes your computer recognize it as a typical guitar controller, which is perfect for community games like Clone Hero and YARG. Modes 2–4, however, are dedicated to different difficulties in Fortnite Festival. Then, if you turn it all the way to mode 9, that puts the guitar in ‘Keyjam’ mode. (It unfortunately doesn’t go to 11.)
Keyjam is CRKD’s fancy nomenclature for saying that it's emulating a keyboard and mouse. This is perfect if you’re trying to play something that doesn’t traditionally support guitar controllers. The mode does change what every button does, though, but luckily CRKD includes a sticker to indicate what the buttons do in Keyjam mode. The other modes are left blank intentionally, to allow you to cook up your own button assignments.
CRKD sent me the multi-platform version of both guitar controllers, which natively support PC, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS and PlayStation. There is a platform switch down at the bottom of the guitar that’ll tell it what it’s connecting to, and it’s important that you set it to the right platform. I accidentally bumped it once to where it was between PC and Switch and it, uh, didn’t work.
On PC, it can connect via a wireless dongle, Bluetooth or via USB-C. I found that USB-C is the best way to play, because it introduces the least latency. But if you want to go wire-free, the dongle really doesn’t introduce much latency. The dongle will also let you connect to Nintendo Switch and PlayStation, though you will have to rely on Bluetooth if you want to jam on Android or iOS.
Out of the box, the dongle is tucked away in a compartment next to the strum bar. Just slide it out of place, and it’ll be there ready for you, then, you can just put it back when you’re done with it. But that’s not the only secret compartment. On the other side of the strum bar there’s another panel that you can slide off to reveal a removable and rechargeable battery. This is awesome, as it means you don’t have to worry about buying a new guitar when the battery eventually dies, you can just swap it out.
Software
The CRKD Gibson Les Paul controllers are extremely customizable, and most of that customization is done through the CRKD mobile app. When you set it up for the first time, you’ll need to pair the guitar to the app by scanning an NFC point on the back of the guitar. This process will reveal a unique serial number and a ‘rarity’ rating, if you care about that kind of thing.
Once it’s paired, you can enter the CTRL menu in the app, where it’ll prompt you to hold down the CTRL button on the controller for a few seconds to connect. Once it’s connected to your phone, it’ll disconnect from whatever platform it was connected to before – so be aware of that. From the CTRL menu, you’ll be able to change button assignments, lighting, and even tilt sensitivity. And, of course, on the Blueberry Burst edition, you’ll be able to tweak the strum bar itself.
When I first started using the guitar, though, I ran into an issue where I had to re-pair the guitar with the dongle every time I used the app, which was extremely annoying. However, I figured out that you just have to hit the exit button in the app, and the guitar will automatically connect to the last device it was connected to. It’s a simple thing, but it definitely threw me for a loop, so it’s something you should be aware of.
Still, it would have been nice to have a PC app that lets you tweak the same settings as the mobile app. I might be too much of a PC gamer, but I’m not a huge fan of breaking out my phone just to tweak the settings for a controller that’s already connected to my PC. Especially because I have to go through a whole process to connect the guitar to the mobile app in the first place.
Gaming
After spending a few months on the PDP Riffmaster, the CRKD Gibson Les Paul really feels like it’s on an entirely new level – especially the Blueberry Burst edition. With its mechanical frets and haptic strum bar, I can feel the notes I’m ‘playing’ much better, which only makes me more accurate. Especially in more difficult songs with long strings of fast, repeated notes, the haptic feedback whenever a strum is actuated helps a lot. But things get a little more complicated when you’re outside of a song.
Particularly in Festival, the CRKD Les Paul makes it a bit difficult to navigate menus and such outside of songs. Even when I flip the mode dial to the dedicated Fortnite modes, I can’t really use the fret buttons and strum bar to go through the menus like I can on, say, the PDP Riffmaster. Now, I can pretty easily navigate the menus with the joysticks and the face buttons around the pseudo pickup switch, but that doesn’t feel quite as natural.
It doesn’t help that the D-Pad located on the head of the guitar is just a giant square, so if my thumb isn’t centered on the down arrow, for instance, my cursor will just move to another menu, which isn’t exactly helpful when I’m just trying to pick which song to play.
Luckily, this issue seems to be unique to Fortnite, and when I’m playing Clone Hero or YARG, navigation feels incredible, even if I wish the start button was located on the front of the guitar, rather than tucked away on the edge of the controller.
No matter what your rhythm game of choice is, these CRKD guitars feel excellent when you’re actually playing music. But because of how seamlessly they work with games like Clone Hero and YARG, this Les Paul feels like it was designed for the rhythm game faithfuls that never let Guitar Hero die, rather than just another response to Fortnite Festival.
Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
