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mr.mortified

Q&A about Joystick Building, Parts, and Purchasing

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It seems that everyone keeps making new threads about their problems or questions regarding joysticks. Here's one main thread to keep this section a bit more clean. I'm a modder and a customs builder. I have done many modifications and have helped many in the fighting game community regarding their equipment. I will answer, or at least try to answer any questions from the community if they are having any problems with their equipment or have any question about joysticks in general

Before you guys ask any questions I need you to read this website.

www.slagcoin.com

Slagcoin is a one stop shop for knowledge regarding your joystick, joystick parts, cases and case building. Who knows, maybe your question is already answered here. At the very least you can ask your question in a legible manner and use the proper terminology when it comes to your parts.

If you still have a problem regarding your joystick or want further information about modification, take a look at the SRK Tech Talk forum (its the best spot in all of SRK, seriously). There are a plethora of modification tutorials, product comparisons and analysis plus a bunch of other cool people building custom joysticks and modding shit.

Now ask away.

edit: thread renamed to include modification

Edited by mr.mortified

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It depends what joystick model you have and what pcb you have. There are generally 2 models of sanwa joysticks in production. The JLW which exclusively connects via the microswitch's.187 quick disconnects or by soldering wires directly to the switches. You'd have to daisy-chain your grounds together and have your signals in separate wires leaving you with 5 wires, one for each direction and one for ground.

For the JLF there is the model which has the microswitches which have to be connected via .187 quick disconnects or solder like the JLW and the model that does not use the microswitches and instead uses a pcb with a wiring harness. The wiring harness has different colors representing each microswitch and a black wire representing ground. Depending on how you orient the joystick's pcb, each of these colors are representative of different directions as seen in the picture below (from joystickvault)

sanwakopplingen.JPG

Now with regards to the PCB, if you're using a custom pcb like the PS360, the Cthulhu/ChImp, or the dual strike, these directions will be listed on the board and you'll just have to solder/screwdown terminal the wired directions each microswitch represents from there. If you're using something like a madcatz board, there is a nice wiring harness that madcatz uses that you can connect your joystick to as long as you are using the JLF with the pcb and wiring harness. If not you'll have to cut the harness and splice your wiring into that harness. The madcatz pcb states what direction and what wire it is on the pcb itself.

Hope that answers your question.

Edited by mr.mortified

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you'd have to padhack your ps1 pad.

like i said in post #1 slagcoin has your answer

http://www.slagcoin.com/joystick/pcb_wiring.html#PCB_DIAGRAMS

the pcb diagram for your pad should be in there along with where to solder your directions to/spiffyshoes hack it. If you need another 5 pin cable, you can easily get one from lizardlick or akihabarashop or solder directly onto the JLF pcb

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HEY HUEY

WHY ARE YOU WORRYING ABOUT HOW TO SOLDER YOUR PCB WHEN I'M DOING IT FOR YOU

Although you should worry about soldering the wires to the PCB when the box is prepared (if it's already ready, then just wait until I do the other parts).

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this is more of a general material/case question, but i've seen some stick makers (particularly souji) make balltops with custom designs on them, how does he do this?

airbrushing skills.

i dont' have them ;_;

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There are no PCB diagrams of TEs on slagcoin. There are only diagrams of pad PCBs, meant for wiring a PCB by yourself.

Edited by KayEff

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In that diagram, the TE is laid out in the very top. The buttons are on the left side as they are meant for looking at the joystick from the back, where you would end up seeing the 4 pin harness cable and therefore the buttons are on the left side and not the right side.

edit: that diagram is quite moot actually when it comes to the round 2 TE pcb as the directions and what signals they are are laid out plainly on the PCB itself

Edited by mr.mortified

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Howdy fellow stickies. I'm currently working on a Joytron Paewang Revolution mod for use on my 360 and my friends ps3, and what I've done so far is taken it apart, sanded it, primed, and painted it (stupid krylon plastic paint takes a week to be chip damage free), and next is to grind out the button wholes to 30mm for my sanwa buttons, and put it all back together with the new stick and wiring. My question though, is if anyone can help me with the artwork for it? I have the right template, and I have artwork, but I'm just working on spicing it up a bit. All I really want to do to the artwork is add a bloody sword cut that passes at an angle through the buttons, but also leaves blood splatter-esque markes around the button labels. The artwork I'm using is the image of Asura from Samurai Shodown. http://www.bishibooru.com/_images/c0ccb8459283d34b78addb5cf8048e4a/6502%20-%20asura%20black_hair%20gothic%20long_hair%20samurai_shodown%20sword.jpg but flipped horizontally. Any help at all, even a nudge in the right direction for more info, is hugely appreciated for my quest. :)

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the paewang eh?

good choice but if you're looking for art, try zepp museum or SRK's tech talk and asking someone to do it for you there. I'm not the most photoshop adept myself. If you were asking something about actual modding then i could help out there

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Oh no, so far I haven't run into any problems with the actual modding process, just trying to get help with the artwork and making it more snazzy. But if I do run into problems during the soldering process or the grinding process, I will definitely ask about that! Thanks for the heads though on where I might get help with my current issue though. :)

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I have a question about building a stick. i have a super street fighter 4 tourny ed arcade stick. I wanna get artwork done and use clear see through buttons to show off the art work. Now what size are the buttons on the ssf4 tourny ed stick?

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I have a question about building a stick. i have a super street fighter 4 tourny ed arcade stick. I wanna get artwork done and use clear see through buttons to show off the art work. Now what size are the buttons on the ssf4 tourny ed stick?

The buttons on the top are 30mm. The ones on the side are 24mm.

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If you're using clear buttons, dont forget about the size of the circle you need for the art inside.

I can't remember the exact dimensions but its somewhere in the ballpark of 20-22mm for the circle inside the button

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its no problem as long as your pcb that you're using is common ground (there's a bit more wiring dinks if it wasn't)

and there's also a bit of heavy case modification

if i remember right, the happ/IL/Suzo sticks use quick disconnect terminals instead of wire harnesses

you're going to have to pull out your soldering iron and figure out which one the wires leading up to the switch is the ground and signal. from there, link the ground wires together and follow the JLF pinout on the other side.

You're also going to have to modify the case to accept a japanese joystick. That requires a few woodworking tools (if its a wood case)

just out of curiosity, what kind of stick do you have?

because you said american, i'm going to assume either AIAB, MAS, or those old school pelican sticks

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Would it be possible to just twist off the bat top and replace with a ball top, or do some joysticks not work that way?

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Well, it'd probably be best to take a look inside the stick and see how the joystick is wired. How hard the job may be depends on how they manufacturers wired it.

You can get complete arcade stick parts or anything related at http://www.lizardlick.com/ They have quite the catalog for what you need to mod/build arcade sticks, so it should always be the first go-to place should you be looking for those kinds of things.

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