Indeed, the SE is more of a “economy” stick, so that people who aren’t serious about spending money can still get a deal on a stick, but it takes a huge hit in quality. However, you can replace all of the parts easily with high quality Sanwa and Seimitsu parts. It costs about $50 to replace all of the stock parts with Sanwa or seimitsu parts, slightly higher if you want specialties, such as octogates, specialty buttons, artwork, etc.
HRAP3 has a Sanwa stick, but Hori buttons, which affects quality some. Easily replaceable, since non-licensed HRAP sticks have Quick disconnects, but licensed (such as a HRAP BlazBlue edition) versions have their buttons soldered to a PCB, which makes for harder replacement. Plain HRAP3 can be switched quickly with quick disconnects. Don’t get their Fighting Stick line, it’s much harder to mod if you want to up the quality, which it doesn’t have as much to begin with.
TE has all Sanwa parts, everything is easy to replace and mod, but the initial quality is great from the get-go. You can usually find sales for them at $100, especially for the R2. Our own MarkMan advertises when there are deals for the $100 shipped Round 2 TE. However, you just missed a special that ended on the 10th and the next chance for one will be next month, as MarkMan says :sad:.
The best, most responsive stick is the TE, or the Hori HRAP3 VLX edition. The VLX is the most expensive, but the perk of it, besides all sanwa parts, and a HUGE amount of stick space, with a lot of weight to it, is that you can change the parts without voiding your stick’s warranty, the PCB is encased separately from the buttons.
Also, just in case you didn’t know, Sanwa is authentic Japanese arcade quality parts. So is Seimitsu, but if you want Seimitsu parts, you’re going to have to do a mod job.
