Pretty much sold out immediately.
Well shit! It looks like initial stock at Play-Asia wasnāt enough and Iām going to have to wait a couple of weeks for them to restock.
EDIT: Fuck it. Cancelled my order. Iāll most likely find one of these at a local retailer anyhow.
where are you at? i mean when you refer to local retailer you can tell its a big city, but i dont know what country, i dont know just not a common phraseā¦
Okay, so my stick came today ā¦ pretty interesting all up. Here are some quick shots:
(Damn Play-Asia kinda dropped the ball on packaging things nicely ā¦ >_<)
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt79/inthebrook//ExarSanwa/15a31b68.jpg
It actually looks a lot better in person compared to the mockups, as the decal reflects light, but isnāt fully mirrored so isnāt a smudge magnet like say, the original HRAPs.
They included both dust washers on the stick on the panel side, probably because they donāt have enough room on the inside (see further).
Comparison with a KOFXII Exar stick. Notice the base is slightly higher, perhaps to accommodate the JLF and ā¦
Crimp terminals! Everything is quite similar to Exarās previous work, although instead of soldering, they use crimp sockets for the buttons and the JLF connector. The buttons arenāt really daisy chained, they just soldered them all to one point. Looks neater I guess? lol
The JLF bracket thing is actually mounted onto the panel, with the plastic base acting as a spacer of sorts. Sorry I didnāt get a good shot of it. The area the JLF is situated in is cut out the same as the previous sticks I think, ie, a hexagon in the shape of the LS-30.
As a result, the JLF actually seems to sit a little higher than standard. Maybe about 30mm? 
I wish they put a shorter shaft in lieu of this, although I guess that wouldnāt qualify as having āall Sanwa partsā. I think if I swapped out the shaft for say, a HFS stick, it would be the correct height. Itās still an interesting effort though.
They even put the Shaft Cover upside-down? :sad:
Thank you the inside pictures.
No problems. I figured I wasnāt the only one who was curious about this.
lol, I didnāt even notice that shaft cover ā¦ but yeah I took the pics and whatnot straight out of the box. I wonder if the others will be the same!
Despite its flaws, I think itās still a pretty cute stick. Probably with a HFS shaft swap out it would be perfect 
Thanks for the pictures is the bottom plate plastic or metal?
The first thing I noticed as that the shaft height was too high. I wonder how easy it is to remove the JLF from the stick since itās hard to see how the JLF is mounted (screws that are underneath the artwork?)
The wiring looks clean enough to possibly take out the PCB and throw in a Paewang with minimal effort. Hmmā¦tempting.
Hmmm, looks interesting, I will be getting my KOFXII stick this weekend, the only stick I have that isnāt a ābrandā stick is the Tek Innovations case.
Might need to play around with how to put the JLF/LS-56 into the case and the only way is possibly drilling through the metal plate with universal mounting pointsā¦
Great pics, the stick width of the EXAR sticks look further than MC and Hori sticks, guessing the slight height increase may be part of the design as well.
Update: Got my KOFXII Exar stick and itās a real shame that Play-Asia charges $40 for it and $100+ for the Sanwa edition because with just a little drilling and wiring work, the KOFXII stick can actually fit Sanwa and Seimitsu stick levers. I got my LS-56 into the case easily and it sits 27mm, all I need is 4mm washers to make it standard height and wire up quick disconnects to each of the wire.
So the shaft is higher as expected.
Hopefully thereās an easy fix of adding washers/spacers to the Sanwa edition, I think I just need longer screws and washers/spacers to fix the height of my stick considering both sticks have no clearance from at the top.
Iām surprised about the size difference between this stick and the Fight Stick!
Camera was slightly on an angleā¦But itās about an inchā¦inch and a half smaller than the Fighting Stick and looks like plenty of room for the stick unlike the FSV series.
Is there any way to get that stick to a standard height? Iām considering picking one of these up, since I want a second stick for friends and what not and this is a cheap and appealing option. Iām a little worried about how much taller the stick is, though. Is there any way to lower it, or to replace it with a shorter, similar quality stick? I donāt think many people here actually have one of these, but any advice would be helpful.
Hm, seems like Seimitsu sticks are shorter than Sanwa sticks. Would I be able to easily swap this JLF for an LS-32?
Iām looking at akihabarashop.jp right now, trying to decide between LS-32 and LS-33. I also canāt make heads or tails of the selectable options next to the āColorā selection. You can see what Iām talking about here. Iām currently on this page of the website.
Is this something that will probably work? I have no experience modding joysticks, but swapping sticks/buttons looks very easy so long as no extensive modding is necessary, so Iām not worried about it so long as it will work without any big changes to the case. Can anyone help?
Short answer: Yes. Longer answer: you might have to do some cosmetic work on the inside so the seimitsu stick fits nicely
Iād go with ls-32-01 since the exarstick uses a wiring harness for the jlf. It works fine for seimitsu sticks but the pcb orientation is different. may have to do some soldering for that or just cut the wires in the middle and reattach them so the signals are correct. If you get an ls-33 get an extra ls-55 or ls-56 spring to go with it because that stick is too lose by it self imo. you will need to either solder the wires to the terminals on the micro switches or crimp them with quick disconnects to work though. Either way youāll need a daisy chain for the ground wire. The options next to color are for spare parts for that particular stick.
Keep in mind that, as the pics of the insides shown by BurningKyo earlier on, youāll need to basically rip off the entire top panel label to remove the JLF, as itās mounted using the 4 small screws/nuts normally used to attach the JLF housing to the mounting plate.
Looking at the photos from previous posts, it seems like the Sanwa Edition still has the same molds as the KOF/non-sanwa editionsā¦ that said, it seems to have retained screw posts where that silly metal gate wasā¦ it might be too high/low though, maybe any of the standard sanwa/seimitsu plates align to it? might have to cut it down to get proper height thoughā¦ that is after getting rid of the JLF body. which seems to the main issue here. Then thereās casing clearanceā¦
Hm, I see what youāre talking about with the way the JLF is mounted. I donāt really want to get that involved. One of the things I like about this stick though is its portability, but with an extra long shaft it becomes slightly less soā¦ I only travel by bike and scooter, so it would always be jammed in a backpack.
^well, see that standard JLF shaft allows clearanceā¦ a phreakmods JLF Link would fit the job perfectly. just buy a 24mm button cover for the holeā¦ and somehow pocket the shaft+balltopā¦ hehe.
Syn, how did you get the artwork back on your stick? Did you ever take it off? Maybe I am interested in a projectā¦ I guess so long as I donāt have to drill through metal Iām game, since I have no way of doing that.