well, originally I had this as a blog post a few weeks ago, but then after realizing that blog posts aren’t immediately made public anymore (indefinitely under moderation) I decided to copy and paste the post here.
It’s nothing mindblowing, which is why I decided to make a blog post rather than a thread originally… But It may still interest some random people with a mayflash and don’t want to do an actual mod.
My friend was interested in getting an arcade stick. He’s not very interested in fighters, he just thought it was cool to have one lying around. So, I offered to sell him the cheapest, worst stick in the world. The mayflash arcade stick…
The thing is, I made it very clear to him that this is a horrible stick. I didn’t want him to have any surprises. The thing is, after not using it for a couple of years, and trying it on the PS3 I noticed a few of the bottom buttons were REALLY unresponsive. (probably due to LL mashing with Chun Li on ST when I used the stick…)
Anyway, the mayflash buttons don’t use a microswitch, they use a silicon base with a carbon dot, similar to old SNES pads. (do modern pads do this as well…? I havn’t opened any lately, so I don’t know…)
After figuring out how everything works, I figured the reason why it wasn’t working was because from my mashing, I must have flattened out the carbon dot so it can’t reach the circuit board as easily.
The repair was simple, Take apart the button, and wrap the plunger with aluminum foil.
Actually, after I did this, the buttons actually became MUCH more sensitive. Actually usable! (like stock hori buttons… not the best, but definitely better than mayflash stock…)
The “cushioning” from the aluminum foil lets the button activate earlier, and you can still press the button all the way down. Actually, it feels like a mix between hori stock and sanwa parts. It’s quite interesting, I can’t describe it.
but I definitely suggest anyone with a crummy Mayflash who doesn’t want to go through with dremmeling 2mm around the hole, and adding wires and soldering them to try this. That giant Mayflash paperweight won’t be so useless…
Edit: I don’t have any photos, of what I did because I did this at my friends house. It should be simple enough though. I can give step by step instructions if for some reason someone actually wants to try this…