Got to play it at BestBuy for a single song "Up Around the Bend" by CCR and even at Medium and not touching GH for about 6 months or so I was able to easily 5 star it. Seems they did make the game a bit easier, but like I said I only played that one song. I do really like the new guitars, along with the Les Paul they added weight that the first two were missing.
The menu also left a little to be desired, song selection was a bit confusing at first because (I assume) you can now make a set list to play instead of just single songs. So you select the song and press "Start" from there.