Blaze Twin Shock Arcade Stick Mod - Uncomplete

Tech Talk
1

I don’t really need anymore since i’ve already ordered everything I needed so I’ll just start posting up my progress as I’m modding the stick.

http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/9269/1000862v.th.jpg

Here’s the stick after I’ve gutted it out.

http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/7349/1000863dy.th.jpg

An OBSF-30 Sanwa button doesn’t fit due to the hole being only 29mm so I had to figure out what I wanted to do; either buy Korean Crown buttons, Ultralux buttons (which would have both fit fine) or buy a metal filer to increase the size of the hole in order to fit the 30mm buttons.

http://hphotos-snc3.fbcdn.net/hs231.snc3/21860_105042329514836_100000272092579_128603_7483164_n.jpg

Here are the parts I received from Lizard Lick Amusements. All Sanwa parts; twelve OBSF-30 buttons, four Sanwa OBSF-24 buttons, four Sanwa OBSM 30mm hole plugs, six Sanwa OBSM 24mm hole plugs, and two JLF-TP-8T ball handle joysticks.

I decided to try to make Sanwa buttons fit so I went out to buy a metal filer and got the job done. Well not really. I still haven’t done the Player 2 side yet due to laziness. It took me forever to do the Player 1 side and my hands got real tired, lol. That’s what happens when you don’t have money to buy a dremel.

The following examples have inspired me to achieve the modification…

Here is serpentarius’ awesome mod with all Ultralux buttons: http://www.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=153574

fightstix modded his with a BlazeBlue theme and all Sanwa buttons but the pictures on his thread are down. Fortunately I’ve found his Photobucket album with photos of the mod here: http://s698.photobucket.com/albums/vv343/fightstix/

By the way, if anyone wants to take the stock buttons and / or joysticks off my hands, feel free to let me know. I doubt I’ll ever be re-using them, lol. They all work perfectly fine last time I played with them.

I’ll be sure to post up more updates as I progressed.

2

I’m pretty sure it takes 28mm buttons which means korean crown buttons will fit it just fine.

3

I’ve never used Korean “Crown” buttons before. I was planning on fitting either Sanwa or Seimitsu buttons on this one. Are the Korean buttons high quality too?

4

Some people have modded this stick before, myself included.
http://www.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=153574

Crowns screw-ins work for sure. I think the snap ins should be fine as well if you opt for those. Crowns are actually quite good. You can get them off of gamingnow.net

5

The quality is still very high, the sensitivity of these buttons from what I’ve read is somewhere in between American and Japanese buttons. Korean part faq here. I can’t remember what the stick mount is like in those blaze sticks so theres a chance you may end up having to get the dremel out to mount the stick anyway.

6

Thanks for the info on the Korean parts. I’ll think about it. I originally wanted to use Sanwa buttons because I know most people are used to the TE sticks and would most-likely prefer the Sanwa buttons over anything else. It’s a two-player stick and I don’t want my opponent bitching over the buttons feeling weird, lol. So I figured it’d be safer to just get Sanwa buttons. I always see Sanwa buttons on arcade cabinets anyway (for the fighting games at least). Personally I don’t care about what buttons I use, as long as they work.

rtdzign, I already put that link up, lol. That was the first mod I ever found and it’s pretty cool. I’ve never heard of Ultralux buttons though. If anyone knows anything about Ultralux buttons and / or where to purchase them, let me know and I might consider them. I like the way they look and how they have LED compatibility.

7

Ultralux.
http://www.ultimarc.com/ultralux.html

8

Thanks for the link, jdm714. Why do Ultralux buttons come with microswitches on the bottom though? That’s kinda weird. Microswitches are for joysticks so it doesn’t make sense to me unless it’s just a bonus extra that the order comes with.

The site also has good deals on wires and quick disconnects too.

9

Happ and iL Buttons are like that too.

10

If a JLF doesn’t fit in the Blaze stick without cutting a hole in the bottom, then I don’t think an American-style button will either. I could be wrong, but they won’t fit in an Agetec case for example.

11

He definitely won’t have enough clearance. rtdzign said the Crown screw-ins just fit. The guy who used those buttons fabricated an entirely new base for the case that made it twice as tall.

I have one of these I’ve been meaning to mod for a while now. I keep buying other sticks in the meantime.

12

Don’t forget laugh’s site; www.etokki.com for Korean buttons.

13

You will have to drill holes in the bottom metal sheet if you use any of the Mainstream Japanese parts available for sale. The bottom shaft sticks out about 2-4 mm below bottom metal sheet. I added rubber feet which added about a 7mm of clearance to the bottom of the stick.

14

If you decide to cut it in half make sure you use a soldering iron, best way to get that thing into two separate sticks.

15

:bgrin:

I can’t imagine the level of plastic fumes that guy must have inhaled.

16

Thanks for the eTokki link. They’ve got great deals on Sanwa buttons and stuff. There’s extra shipping cost but the sales definitely make up for it.

And yeah I think I’ve seen the thread where the guy actually cut his Blaze Twin Shock in half. Unfortunately all the photos within the thread were dead though so I didn’t get to see the disaster.

I think I know what I need now in order to enlarge the holes to fit the 30mm Sanwa buttons. I need to get myself a dremel. So I’ll try to purchase one maybe tomorrow at a hardware store.

I’ve found this video on how to modify a JLF joystick to fit inside the case of a Wii HORI arcade stick [media=youtube]wXRghqb4Lms"[/media]. The guy uses a dremel to cut the tabs off the JLF, cut some parts off around the mounting area for more space and drill new holes on the restrictor plate.

The HORI sticks and the Blaze Twin Shock seem to be about the same size in height, so I’m thinking maybe this mod will work with the Blaze Twin Shock too. What do you guys think? Should I go for it? If anything, I can maybe purchase one JLF joystick and test it out. If it ends up not fitting, I can at least stick it in one of my HORI’s or maybe the Agetec.

17

i did a mod of this stick…sure nothing really fancy like the others but it turned out pretty good back then:
http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/2522/latoa.jpg
http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/7706/retrot.jpg
http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/1538/frontex.jpg

knockoff sanwa-like buttons
stick sanwa jlf imitated

:slight_smile:

the buttons holes were too smal for the 30mm so i had to drill em a bit…

18

If the stick is around the same height as a Hori stick, you might be able to snag a Seimitsu LS-33 in there without a ton of effort.

19

Damn, they made one for the Dreamcast too?! That is awesome. It’s probably worth even more for Dreamcast. I like how you can stick two VMU’s in at the top. I love the VMU slots on the Dreamcast sticks, lol.

Anyway, I’ve just finished working on the artwork that I’m going to put on the stick. Here it is:

http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/6784/ggtemplate.th.png

I had to measure everything out. The button placements aren’t in the picture but they exist in the PSD file as a hidden layer. I was going to just print it out as is and then manually cut out the holes.

My first idea was too messy and it had too many random characters clumped together. I thought, “This is going to be an arcade stick that I’ll keep for a long time. A lot of people are going to see this stick and it’s going to represent me.” So I decided to go with a more simple theme. I ended up finding the picture with Ky Kiske and Sol Badguy as females and I liked it a lot so I just started off with those on the stick only. Then I couldn’t help myself since there was just so much empty space left so I went and threw in some more Guilty Gear character renders. I would have used other characters such as Milia Rage and Jam Kuradoberi but Chipp Zanuff, Order Sol and Slayer were the only renders available on the site that I was on, lol. At least it definitely looks like a Guilty Gear-themed stick.

What’s also cool about the theme I chose is that it’s based off the colors blue and red with blue representing Ky and red representing Sol, and it just so happens that the red and blue Sanwa buttons are some of the colors on sale on eTokki so it’s all good. I mean I could have went with just all black or all white buttons but this is a really long and insane stick so I thought I should make it more vibrant. What do you guys think?

Also I’m planning on covering the entire front fully rather than cutting it off where the turbo functions and the Start / Select buttons are. I just thought it’d be easier that way, plus no one has done that yet. It should look sick in the end, if I do it right.

Oh and I’m going to put all Sanwa parts on. I will try my best to make a JLF fit. I think I can do it.

20

I want to know what kind of buttons have the best clearance from the bottom plate. Also, is the pcb worth using or keeping? Thanks for the help.