A friend and I recently bought a pair of MLG arcade sticks directly from Madcatz, and when we first used them, we noticed that the 6 white buttons felt different from the sanwas on my friend’s eightarc. We initially didn’t think much of it and assumed the springs were simply slightly stiff from being new. Out of curiosity, I opened up the stick, but I can’t positively make out whether the white buttons are 100% non-sanwa. I believe the grey/black ones are definitely sanwa.
As for feeling of the buttons, the questionable white buttons have a “hollow” feeling when pressed, compared to sanwas, which has a more “solid” resistance when pressed. Another note is that the white buttons do get stuck if pressed near the edge (it will kind of stick to the housing). Hopefully someone from the community can confirm whether the white buttons in the sticks are real sanwas. Thanks.
That sure looks like the Madcatz stock buttons that are in the SE stick:
Definitely not OBSF-30’s. There are differences between older / newer OBSF-30’s like the shape of the microswitches but as far as I’ve ever seen every Sanwa button has Sanwa stamped on the microswitch portion as well as on bottom rim of the casing.
It’s strange that there would be SE parts in a TE. My friend’s stick has 1 Sanwa button and that’s on his LK, the rest of the whites are the knock-offs. It’s like they literally grabbed a hand-full of random white buttons and stuck them in.
That’s concerning considering you got them directly from Madcatz. Talk about quality control falling on it’s face.
Might want to give Markman a shout too @MarkMan23.
Wow, that’s surprising! FWIW, the redesigned Madcatz buttons in the TvC stick (I’m assuming in the WWE Brawlstick as well) have the Madcatz logo on the bottom.
i have always told people to double check their buttons on any type of non SE stick. One of the first Street Fighter IV TE’s i worked on had 3 sanwa buttons and the rest were the knock off buttons out of the box.
Didn’t know the problem happens to other TEs. Well, I sent Markman a PM. Hopefully he can do something about this.
It’s a real catch 22 if your warranty voids from opening up the top. You won’t know if your product fails to meets its specifications unless you open it up, and if you open it up to find that it doesn’t, you just voided your warranty. But as far as I can tell, the warranty terms in the little pamphlet aren’t exactly clear about what constitutes “tampering”
Opening up the panels from either top or bottom will void the warranty. But of course, how can they tell you opened it from the top panel unless they see that you messed around with it’s internals?
The point of the warranty stick is to show proof that you opened up. They don’t give a damn about the sticker, it’s the fact that you might mess up the internals and try to get it repaired/replaced for free is what bothers Mad Catz.
This is why Razer’s proposed (and, to be fair, so far hypothetical) solution is so good (that messing with the PCB enclosure voids the warranty, not opening the stick, changing buttons, et cetera). Hopefully it will become the standard…
I don’t want to turn this into a void or did-not void warranty argument, but the fact is, what they sold to me and to others affected are not what they claim it to be (in this case, having a full set of Sanwa buttons).
We haven’t heard back from Markman yet so whether or not opening up the stick to inspect the parts will play a part in replacing the buttons is yet to be known. Although I personally think it would be pretty messed up to misrepresent to, or even defraud a customer and then refuse to remediate the problem on the basis of warranty.
