OK, so my Sanwa buttons arrived, and 6 hours later, I’ve got them installed.
Instead of cutting off the tabs, I decided to drill new holes to match the Sanwa pin spacing.
I drilled the slots from the back side, using a Dremel with a 3/64" drill bit. The slots need to be about 3 times the height of the original holes. Here’s a diagram:
And here’s what it will look like when you flip it over:
There’s still lots of exposed metal to resolder the new pins to. No wiring required, just solder them into place!
Some notes about the Sanwa buttons: They don’t fit. After grinding off the metal tabs on the faceplate, they still wouldn’t go in. You need to widen the holes. I spent about 60 seconds going around the edge of each hole with the grinder, and finally they were able to fit. But!.. not all the way. There’s four little plastic tabs on the buttons that keep them from sliding all the way in. Instead of making the holes even wider, I just ground these little tabs off the buttons, and finally, they went in.
The smaller start and select buttons didn’t need any special treatment, they fit fine.
