So, the questions hasn’t been directly answered yet… do the sticks work fine out of the box? Or is it NECESSARY to mod them for them to work properly? I’m interested in the modding, but I have never done it, nor have the least idea where to begin.
Sidenote SpiffyShoes… you live in Dallas too!
Yeah. The JLW’s I have are 7 centimeters from top of the plate to the top of the ball. I have one bottom mounted in a Pelican Real Arcade box and it looks and plays great. I’ll mount one in one of these Red Octane boxes when I get them and take a picture.
A lot of asked questions about this stick have yet to be answered…
Oh and trust me, a 20 dollar stick won’t work that great out of the box. The buttons are atrocious and the stick is barely playable from what I’ve heard. I’ve tried the buttons on that stick and they truly are horrible.
Hell…you can’t get a commercial stick that has a good joystick and good buttons for less than $80. Unless it is the old Dreamcast Agetec 
I’m buying them because the box and the PCB are worth more than $20.
I better get to reading some tutorials on how to mod this then >.<
What part of Dallas are you in Spyder? I’m in the South Plano area near UTD. If you need help let me know.
Sweet! I’m in North Dallas near Richardson, about 2.5 miles from UTD. I’m going to be asking you for some help since I have no idea how to do anything except solder >.< Thanks for the offer!
Oh and dial911 they usually package the stick pretty well. What exactly do you mean by origonal packaging?
Thanks, I ordered 2 for modding.
When I ordered a pelican real arcade stick it was shipped to me in the same box that it retails in. No bubble wrap, no additional box, no duck tape, no protection at all. The joystick could have been trashed through shipping. Luckily it wasn’t; so I was just wondering if the red octane sticks would be packaged and shipped the same way. That is what I meant by “original packaging.”
Cheers.
Yeah, the only commercial sticks that are good out of box are Hori Real Arcade and MAS sticks. That’s bout it. Both pushing the 100 + dollar range. Oh and would you help with teaching me how to put the PS PCB inside of the stick? Or anyone else that knows how to put Dual Shock PCB’s inside of a stick?
horis are pretty decent at 50+. everything up to the t5 hori had good buttons as well.
how hard is it to top mount a sanwa?
It isn’t very hard to top mount a joystick if you know what you are doing.
yeah, modding this stick should be a breeze with the right sanwa stick and competition buttons, right???
so comp buttons fit fine, but what sanwa stick does w/o use of tools?
anyway, for $20 this is a damn good deal!
Well my cases just came in today. That was pretty quick for their free shipping. Only 2-3 days. The shipped USPS instead of DHL like they normally do.
Any way, the sanwa JLF doesn’t bottom mount in them very well. It is too short to really work well. From what Iseelba said about the JLW though I think it would bottom mount just fine so if you want a sanwa that will fit in these cases pretty easy I’d look into them. In particular I’d probably recomend the JLW-UM series since they have a larger dust cover. The 1.5" dust covers that come on the TM series doesn’t quite cover the hole in the plexi-glass when the stick is moved. Although I don’t think you can get the 35mm ball tops for the UM series only 45mm. I may be wrong though. The bat tops would probably be best if you don’t like the big ball tops.
As for Happ sticks I think the best thing to do is to Top Mount them. If you tried to rout out from the inside to bottom mount them the shaft would just end up feeling too tall in my opinion. Happ does make spacers for the Compeition and P360 joysticks that would make the shaft the correct size if you top mounted them though. Then you could just cut off the excess part of the shaft.
Short Pivot Bushing for Comp. - 95-0722-00
Short Spacer for P360 - 95-2470-00
hey, can you please take pics and post them?
how is the pcb by the way?
What exactly would you like to see pics of? Just a confirmation that the JLF is to short to bottom mount in them? Or what?
The PCB is ok. I wouldn’t say it is the best PCB in the world but I don’t know that it is the worst either. It is definently better than the ones that used to come with their old sticks/cases. Their old ones wouldn’t work with allot of converters. This new one seems to work fine with all the converters I have though. They also have done a much better soldering job on these PCB’s than what they used to do on their old PCB’s. It is kind of funny because the PCB’s that come in the RO Time Crisis foot pedals are much better than these ones. I don’t know why they couldn’t have used the same PCB for these sticks too. They could have done a better job of securing the PCB and the wires. The PCB is just stuck onto the side of the box with some double sided sticky stuff. There are some holes in the PCB so you can easily secure it down with some screws if you want, which I would recomend doing. Also it would have been nice if they used a stress relief on the wires going to the buttons so that the part soldered to the PCB is less likely to jiggle around and break off.
In summary the PCB is probably just as good as what you would find in say the SF: Aniversary stick but not as good as what you would find in a Hori stick. It should work fine if you secure it better and tie down the wires.
thanks for the info!
just wanted something like a side shot if it’s no problem
don’t worry about it if it’s too much, though.
2 to 3 days? Wow! Since you live pretty close, I guess that’s how long it should take then. I’m so excited and anxious to try to mod this thing = Though I’ll probably be needing a bunch of guidance >.<
Yeah what kind of parts are you planning to put in yours? When you get it I can either come to your place or you can bring it over here and I’ll help you fix it up.
Here is a side pic of the new case next to their old cases so you can see the difference in size.
So whats the EASIEST stick to swap with? As well as buttons? I’m really open to anything, but I’d prefer a Happs stick with Sanwa buttons, but if no Happs fits, whats the best-fitting Sanwa/Seimetsu stick? Thanks.
Dunno exactly what parts I want to use. I was thinking a competition bat-style (since I prefer bat over the ball) sanwa (maybe) or Happ (more likely) stick with some orange Happ buttons. I don’t really know what else to do to it, so I’d need help in that. And either one (you coming here or me going there) would be fine. PM me which you’d prefer with an address if it’s your place, or I’ll PM you my address back if you prefer to come here.