So I’m looking for a new stick, I have been looking at some custom arcade stick makers and stumbled upon shadaloo.eu, being from EU this was really nice since I will be able to dodge a lot of tax, not like if I were to buy it from US.
Anyway my questions is, can I trust shadaloo.eu?
Are there sticks any good/easy to mod?
And does anyone else have some other recommendations, like another custom stick maker. I like bigger sticks like the Madcatz TE2.
I have been looking at Hori sticks but none of them really appeal to me, and I see just as much good about the Hori edge as I see people having trouble with it things breaking and what not.
I haven’t bought much from Shadaloo – I bought some joystick extenders a few years ago – BUT the shop’s been featured on SRK in articles before and it’s got a solid reputation for service.
Whose sticks are easy to mod? Depends on what you want… Be aware the joysticks cost more in the EU than they do in the US or most of Asia. That’s just the way it is. You pay more in general for goods – especially if it’s not made in the EU. Most gaming hardware and games themselves originate outside the EU. You end up paying more for electronic goods, period, because of where you live.
There are other custom stick makers out there like Jasen’s Customs but Shadaloo.eu is very good from what I hear for importing cabinets and other customization services.
As far as Hori joysticks breaking down…
No, I haven’t had that happen to me but I don’t drag joysticks through airport customs or take them to tournaments where they get a beating. A joystick bag is NOT going to protect your stick from all the scuffing and deep scratches. It will NOT protect delicate electronics and parts from breaking if you drop the joystick on a hard concrete or hardwood floor, either! There are also a lot of people who eat and drink around these things and tend to make messes on top of them. There are far more joysticks damaged through sheer neglect and poor treatment by their owners than ‘duds’ delivered through mail.
Many people in general do not treat a lot their possessions very well and I’d say that electronics today are probably more sensitive to breaking than they were in the past. The game consoles today have more moving parts – particularly motors for disc drives – than past game consoles did. They also run a lot hotter and sometimes don’t have adequate fan/heat ventilation and that causes critical parts to warp and break. It’s no secret that cartridge-based consoles have generally held up better than game-disc based consoles introduced since the mid-1990s have! The XBox 360 of this past generation has the reputation of being the least reliable and most trouble-prone game console in videogame history because of the console breakdowns that plagued that system for the first several years of its life.
The fact is that Hori joysticks in general have a BETTER reputation than most other mass-market joystick lines including Mad Catz. Mad Catz just has a bigger market presence worldwide than Hori does. Hori’s a smaller almost family-run outfit that’s based in Japan and primarily concerned with the local Asian market but they have expanded into the US and offer most of the same joysticks in the US that they sell in Japan. Their other smaller English-speaking market is Canada… Like the US, Canadians mainly have to go through videogame speciality stores or on online to buy Hori goods. It’s not perfect but people CAN find and buy Hori goods if they look.
I’d say the PCB’s in Hori joysticks – particularly the HRAP’s – are more reliable than most other manufacturer’s joystick PCB’s and the plastics they use in their joystick cases are generally not as prone to developing deep, visible scratches like the early Mad Catz TE’s were. You can sneeze on a Mad Catz TE generation 1 or 2 joystick case and it develops a permanent mark on the case!
The Hori Fighting Edge is a very good joystick but it’s directed towards a specific group of gamers – hardcore fighting game players – and does not have all the PCB features that the Mad Catz TE’s and HRAP’s do. Most of the deleted features are things people don’t use 99% of the time like Turbo button functions, the LS-DS-RS analog/digital joystick dip switch, etc. The LS-DS-RS is generally only used on the PS3 to navigate through and set up your console desktop picture!
On the other hand, the Fighting Edge has a lot of features that were NOT standard prior to the later introductions of the Razer Atrox and Mad Catz TE2 joysticks – these include a cloth to wipe the grime and grease off the plexi, a plexi shipped with the joystick itself to protect customized art => you STILL generally have to buy plexi’s separate to protect artwork on most joysticks on-market, and one-press button layout customization that’s not present on most joysticks.
The other major criticisms I see of the Fighting Edge are the fact that the plexi top gets dirty – but what joystick plexi/faceplate DOESN’T get finger prints or grease on it? – and the new Hori parts themselves, the Kuro buttons and Hayabusa joystick lever. Fact is most of us who have played with the new Hori parts for anything over 3-4 days think they’re at least well-made, if not wonderfully engineered, arcade parts. The new Hori parts are at least as durable as any of the arcade parts Sanwa or Seimitsu manufacture. IF you like joystick levers – particularly the LS-32 – from the arcade parts manufacturer Seimitsu, it’s very easy to transition to the Hayabusa lever. Personally, I think the Hayabusa is the best-made Japanese control lever out on the market now. The Kuro’s themselves are at least as good as the Sanwa- or Seimitsu-manufactured buttons.
Thank you a lot for you feedback GeorgeC, that was a lot of really good knowledge you dropped on me there, and I will certainly think about it when I’m going to buy my stick and ill probs look at the Hori Edge again. But yea still people keep it coming with awesome feedback and opinions.
If you’re in the EU, you can always get a B15 stick easily.
What are you looking for exactly? Your original post seems to be a bit all over the place.
Do you want a casing that you can easily, conveniently and often mod and swap out parts? Or are you looking for a well-built custom stick? Depending on the answer to those, you’d be looking at different ends of the spectrum of sticks.
If you say you like larger sticks like the TE2, why don’t you just get a TE2 directly? Throw in the TE2 Crossbone that Phreakazoid will be releasing in the near future with a PS360+, and you’ve got yourself the ultimate stick in terms of mod-ability and functionality.
Oh sorry, FreedomGundam I maybe should have said this, I’m a collector. I already have a TE2 and are waiting for crossbone. But yea I think I want a well-built custom stick as you put it. I enjoy collecting sticks and using different ones, plus I also try to do some local friendly tournaments in Denmark, so I let people borrow my sticks 
I’m going to look at those B15 just from there front page of there website, they look awesome.
Jesus those B15 are awesome, but 400 pounds for a stick is a bit too much for me. But I’m going to keep them in mind.