Sanwa Custom Arcade Sticks

[johnkiddier]

As there has been a long ongoing discussion about custom arcade sticks I thought some members may be interested in my latest project - the neo stick.

http://uk.f1.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/jimkounter/album?.dir=/6c8a&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//uk.f1.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/jimkounter/my_photos

I have used a Sanwa ball top joystick from http://www.ultimarc.com and convex japanese style buttons from Happ controls for the main buttons and standard concave buttons fopr the ''player 1' and 'insert coin' buttons

The top on both of my sticks are made from 12mm thick MDF, so you can see that there is enough clearance on the top of the joystick even when mounting underneath the wood. This is certainly a lot easier than routing out the top.

I've covered the top in textured control panel vinyl from Happ controls and I'm really impressed with the stuff. It's pretty thin but extremely tough and looks fantastic.

Here's a pic of my PS2 stick

http://uk.f1.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/jimkounter/album?.dir=/121a&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//uk.f1.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/jimkounter/my_photos

This stick differs in that it uses the standard concave buttons throughout.

Hopefully this may prove useful to anyone intending to build their own.

I can supply dimensions etc if anyone's interested.

Cheers

John.

[bcass]

Looks good. Of course, what we need is some enterprising company to be churning these out with adaptors to use on every system imaginable.

[johnkiddier]

Both MAS and X-Arcade make multi format sticks.

They are pretty expensive and use poorer quality parts. The X-Arcade especially uses cheap cloned versions of the Happ sticks and buttons.

It's fairly easy to make your own stick and create adapters for each different system. Altenratively use a PS2 controller as the base and just use commercially available adapters.