LS-32 modification tutorial, "Project LS-36"

Tech Talk
1

How?s it going Tech Talk? With all the high-level tutorials I?ve read and followed on SRK the past couple of years, I never thought that I?d be able to contribute since I didn?t have that much know-how. But here I stand, to present to you this humble little tutorial. It?s not quite as advanced as Bomberman?s Street Fighter IV Arcade FightStick multi-console mod tutorial or as useful as TingBoy?s old Hori Real Arcade Pro 2 mod tutorial, but I hope my tutorial will be of some use!

I, like many Seimitsu users on this forum, think that the LS-32 is the greatest joystick to ever bless the arcade community. It?s my favorite joystick and the very reason why I decided to ditch those imprecise, loose Sanwa sticks. Alas, no human produced product ever comes without flaws. The LS-32 is plagued by two aspects which, although easy to overlook, still nag at even the most devout owner.

The first is the coveted pivoting issue. When an LS-32 is slowly pushed to hit the restrictor, continuing to apply pressure will make the joystick do a little ?jump? which makes the shaft move about half a millimeter further. It?s perfectly harmless; nothing breaks even after extended periods and it doesn?t impact performance, but it?s something that people get bugged by. The second issue, which may or may not be a huge problem for many, is the fact that the LS-32 lacks any openly available option for a shaft cover. Even if the shaft is protected by a thin coat of anti-rust coating, it will, inevitably, fall victim to oxidation.

It?s clear that I wanted to fix them, but how? I spent a lot of time looking up information on this forum to find out how to solve these problem and I?ve finally developed a definitive fix. This fix I have dubbed?

Project LS-36, named so since this project uses parts and incorporates attributes of both the LS-32 and LS-40 Seimitsu joysticks into a single joystick. The average of 40 and 32 is 36, so go figure on how I got the name.

Now that my forward is done, on to the actual guide!

WHAT YOU WILL NEED

Tools:

  • A Phillips head screwdrivers (the + shaped ones), not too large, and not too small. You should have one in the right size already if you?ve taken apart an LS-32 before.
  • Something which will let you remove the C-ring from the LS-32. This can either be a dedicated removal tool or a small and large flathead screwdriver and needle-nose pliers combo. Or, you can do it the slagcoin method and use a strand of wire wrapped around the ring.

Parts:

All of the LS-40 parts I listed can, to my knowledge, only be obtained from AkihabaraShop. Pay them a visit; trust me, they work VERY quickly and it?s no excuse not to try this mod when buying other parts since, total, the parts only cost you like 6 bucks.

THE GUIDE (Sorry for the slightly dark pictures by the way)

Step 1: Remove the LS-32 shaft

Unfortunately, I took pictures sometime after I did the mod meaning that by this point, I already removed the C-ring from my LS-32 and took out the shaft so I can?t show you this step in picture form. However, slagcoin can tell you how to do this so I?ll be relying on him! Just look up the LS-32 under “Joystick and Buttons Attributes and Brand Parts.” DO NOT THROW AWAY THE SPRING!!! YOU?LL NEED IT LATER!

These are the parts you’ll be replacing.

And these are the replacements!

Step 2: Putting on the shaft cover

Take the LS-40 shaft and shaft cover and put them together. This is really counterintuitive to how it?s done on Sanwa?s JLF series. You don?t simply slide the shaft cover on from the top, but you have to do it from the underside of the shaft. You?ll see what I mean in the pictures. It took me an e-mail from AkihabaraShop to get this one right. :lol:

You slide the shaft cover onto THIS end

Partly installed then installed completely

Step 3: Put the shaft in the pivot/bearing

This should be simple enough. Slide the bottom half of the shaft through the hole in the bearing. Make sure the flat side of the bearing is side touching the shaft cover! From here, you should apply some lubrication to your bearing. Ideally, you’d use a small dab of Shin-Etsu grease (I recommend buying a small quantity from masturfader for $8.00 shipped), but recycling is good too. Just take your pinky finger, wipe off the grease already on the LS-32 bearing, then reapply it to the LS-40 bearing. No need to lube the LS-32 base; it’s already got some on it.

The old LS-32 bearing inside the base

How it should look with the LS-40 bearing

With the shaft going through the bearing

Step 4: Installing the spring cover, spring and actuator

First, slide the spring cover over the bottom half of the shaft sticking out from under the LS-32 base. Make sure it?s oriented as I pictured it or you?ll be having one hell of a time putting the E-clip on later!

Next, you should put the spring and actuator on. You should still have the spring from the original LS-32 so just use that. To get the E-clip and actuator installed, you?ve got to use a bit of elbow grease and press together the parts while you slide the E-clip into the groove on the bottom of the shaft. After having the E-clip settled, use your pliers to force it all the way over the actuator bottom and around the groove. Simple enough.

Spring and actuator on the shaft

How it should look from the underside when it’s done

Step 5: Install into your stick case

At this point, feel free to start installing your LS-36 into your stick. Upon mounting it, install the PCB assembly first, then the metal base, main guide, and finally sub guide. As a side note, if you wanted, you can do what I did and install an LS-40 yellow sub guide instead of your regular blue LS-32 sub guide for smoother sides. Note that you are going to be needing a LOT of force to fit the LS-40 sub guide onto the LS-32?s base. Not so much from the sub guide not being made for the LS-32, but mostly from the cheap plastic and the not-precise holes on the LS-40 sub guide. Just hammer it in with the handle of your screwdriver if you can?t force it in. Trust me, nothing?s going to break on you.

LS-40 sub guide on LS-32

Step 6: Profit!

Congratulations! You are now the proud user of an LS-36! But what benefits exactly do you get that you couldn?t get with a regular LS-32 or LS-40?

You get:

  • The joystick build quality of an LS-32
  • The shaft cover of an LS-40
  • Fixed pivot problem
  • A semi-circular gate in terms of ?feel?

The semi-circular gate thing is due to a rather odd thing I found when using the LS-40 actuator. Since the actuator?s bottom half is thinner than that of the original LS-32 actuator, your actuator actually turns semi-circular since the bottom half will never touch the corners of the restrictor gates without some excessive forcing. VERY neat if you like more circular gates!

Anyways, I hope this guide helped you folks! Credits go to:

  • AkihabaraShop.jp for supplying me with my parts, being the source of the pics of said parts, and showing me that [media=youtube]Sqdy6YRikfw"[/media]
  • jdm714 and Takahashi for some awesome info they provided me with in the Sanwa and Seimitsu FAQ
  • slagcoin?s site for it?s epic information
  • Seimitsu for making the greatest joystick known to man and the greatest buttons known to man (PS-14-G)
2

great post! i’ve been wanting to try something similar myself, and since i already have both joysticks i just may do it tomorrow

3

Awesome, looks like I’ve got an order to aki shop coming up so I can try this out.

4

You should make up a batch of these and start selling them to the lazy.

5

Good stuff Ikagi-chan.
I saw the video TheRealNeoGeo made for YouTube of AkihabaraShopdotjp before.

I was wanting to see if anyone would make a picture Tutorial for using LS-40(-01) Shaft in LS-32(-01).
And here you are with a Tutorial!
Thank you Ikagi-chan.
It will help others.

And I don’t know how I helped you in the Sanwa and Seimitsu FAQ.
I don’t remember any Post of mine about related.
But thank you for the shout out.
Laugh.

Unless I mistake jdm14 for me.
Then that would explain why I not remember.
But still, thank you a lot for your great contribution.

6

Akihabarashop has a video of the LS-40 shaft swap on the LS-32, but this is a nice detailed procedure of doing it.

But uh, if I may ask, what is exactly making the LS-32 jump when pushed on the gate too hard?

7

The slope/shape of the actuator/pivot make it so that extra force makes the shaft slide up.

8

Nice tutorial, could you insert the pics inside [img] tags ? That would make the tuto even more enjoyable.

As to sticks, I’m just like you, prefering Seimitsu to Sanwa but I slightly prefer the sanwa buttons.

9

And you don’t need to add more lube at any point? Neat-o.

10

If I do this mod could I still keep the LS-32 shaft? The reason I ask is that I have a carbon fiber shaft cover from BP that I bought a few years ago that I want to keep.

11

Haha. Well, I’ll put out a caveat emptor out and say that while this LS-36 feels freaking GREAT to me, it really does feel kinda funny at first and might deter people away. That’s why I recommend people try it out for themselves since really, it’s only a $6.00 USD (roughly) investment for them the next time they order parts as opposed to having to shell out more than 5 times that amount to buy one modded by me, since we also have to consider labor fees, shipping, etc. :tdown:

Oh snap, my bad! Nope, I definitely was referring to you in my post. I don’t even think there’s a jdm14 on this site! My mistake, I forgot the 7. :sleep:

I was considering that, but I was thinking that I might alienate some users with slower internet connections. However, why not, let’s give your suggestion a go right now! Can’t hurt to try it. :wonder:

Hmmm…This is actually a good point. I almost forgot I had to add a little bit of lube myself using some Shin-Etsu grease I bought from masturfader. However, if I’m recalling correctly, I think that you can bypass this step by taking the grease from the original LS-32 bearing and putting it on the new LS-40 bearing. Or, in fact, you don’t even have to do that since the LS-32 base itself has some grease still on it. I’ll still add this to the tutorial, thanks for that heads up kikimaru024!

This is kinda tough; I can’t say with 100% confidence that it won’t work, but my intuition’s telling me it won’t. Big Pocket’s custom LS-32 shaft and dust cover sets, while looking very nice, only properly fit on an LS-32 shaft. The hole in the LS-40 bearing however is too small to accommodate for the thicker LS-32 shaft as is the spring holder and the actuator. The bearing here really is the most important part as it is, if brighenne and I are correct, the reason why this mod fixes the pivoting issue.

You could potentially do a ghetto mod and try to fit your Big Pockets LS-32 shaft cover on top of the shaft cover of the LS-40, but I’d imagine that it either wouldn’t fit or it would tilt a lot while you’re in the middle of gameplay. :xeye:

12

speaking of the semi circular gate feel, this was the main reason I didnt put another ls-40 in my latest stick. Would removing the larger plastic restrictor piece that you can switch from 8/4/2 way give it a real square feel?

13

Yeah absolutely. I can’t see any reason why removing the sub guide wouldn’t make it feel more like a square.

14

i know you listed all the differences between this and the ls-32, but how does it differ from a stock ls-40, in terms of feel/engage/throw/etc

15

Oh boy, let’s see if I can get this info correct…From my experiences with the LS-40 (which were very short lived to be honest), this is what I think the differences are between my LS-36 and the LS-40:

  • Improved construction quality due to the LS-36 being derived from the LS-32 base structure
  • A maximum throw length somewhere in between an LS-32 and an LS-40, more on the LS-32 side
  • The engage distance is more on the LS-40 side than the LS-32 side, but just like the throw, it’s somewhere in between
  • As for feel, it’s just in general tight. Not quite as precise as the LS-40, more like the precision of an LS-32. This is a stick that lets you do precision movements yet gives you enough leniency such that you don’t have to train yourself to make pinpoint movements with your wrist.

That’s the best way I can describe it. Until more people start to try this, I won’t know how the general population will take to this LS-36 mod.

16

Note that that will make the throw bigger than on a stock LS-32 due to the smaller diameter of the LS-40 actuator.

17

Wait, so removing the sub guide and leaving the main guide would give it a more squared feel?

I would love try this mod, but the semi-circular feel is a major turn off for me. :frowning:

18

Yeah, just don’t put the yellow sub guide. The sub guide imposes on the corners of the square main gate to make the corners feel rounded. This picture shows why pretty well:

19

Oooooh okay. Thanks for clearing that up.

20

Hey thanks for the tutorial. The two reasons you posted were why I skipped over the LS-32 and bought the JLF. But I was actually stuck between the LS-40 and JLF, most docs I read were biased towards the Sanwa sticks so that what I want with. But I would like a tighter feel and less throw.

In the future I’ll have to sell my JLF and try this mod on an LS-32. I haven’t even permenantly installed my JLF yet so I wanna wait a little while lol