I tried looking for a shaft cover for my Seimitsu LS-32-01 joystick on www.AkihabaraShop.jp and www.LizardLick.com but I can’t find one anywhere. I tried the shaft cover that comes stock with my Hori Real Arcade Pro 2 but it doesn’t fit. Anybody know where I can get one? I’m tired of my ball-top unscrewing all the time 
Open the stick up again and tighten up that ball reaaaallly snugly. As much as possible. Unless the threads on the shaft’s top end or inside the ball are stripped or loose or malformed, it shouldn’t be slipping off at all.
If it’s not screwed on tightly enough to start with, even the tiniest bit of give will quickly become a lot of give to the point where the ball can be taken off from the top (joystick all sealed up) with your bare hands.
Note that a shaft cover really shouldn’t do anything extra to prevent this assuming the ball has been screwed tightly enough to start with.
If you’re still really set on finding a shaft cover for the LS-32, know that its shaft is already quite thick. I’d use the Akihabara Shop thread or website and ask TheRealNeoGeo (who runs it) if one off of some other Seimitsu joystick would fit it, or is at least wide and thick-walled enough that you can widen the hole to fit the LS-32’s shaft. If you can find the right shaft cover to start with, the process would probably work something like [media=youtube]5vfsJ8Go3CI[/media].
As fair warning though, putting a shaft cover on the already well-girthed LS-32 will just make it feel more like a chubby.
I haven’t seen any shaft cover for the LS-32 besides the custom ones I made earlier this year:
http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=153678
and believe it or not they did help to make the balltop harder to unscrew.
Aaah! I knew I’d seen 'em somewhere before, but I couldn’t remember or find it so I didn’t mention hahah. Those things look awesome, dude. 
thanks for the help deadfrog, i’ll try tightening the ball top from inside more. Even though the LS-32 shaft is already pretty thick, I think the shaft cover would help because let’s say i’m holding the shaft with the cover ON, if i spin the balltop it wont actually be loosening, it will just be spinning inside ( and if I hold the balltop, and spin the shaft with the cover on, it also will not be getting loose because i would just be spinning the shaft cover, I used to do it all the time with stock Sanwa JLF on HRAP 2 ).
M K L, do you still have the white LS-32 shaft covers(with dust cover) you linked me to? I live in New York and I’d like to buy one from you 
you can send me a PM or email me at jav1ts@hotmail.com
Thanks a bunch guys.
Loctite Blue is your friend.
Hmm, I might just try that. Hope it works
My shaft covers don’t spin at all. They are slightly taller than the shaft and act like a washer squeezed in between the balltop and that ring on the shaft.
http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/1093/s2020066wd1.th.jpg
But if you just don’t want the balltop to unscrew, you’re better off using loctite 222 or 246.
You could grab the shaft for the JLF and widen it. If you send per a PM he’ll tell you exactly how to do it.
I prefer to spray-paint the whole shaft + balltop (ensure that the threads are tape protected)
I just got done making an LS-32-01 shaft cover myself.
I bought a JLF-CD shaft cover and proceeded to mod it.
Tried medium/100 grit sandpaper wrapped around a pen but got nowhere after an hour with this!
Then, I cracked out two of my small files – a coarse round and semicircular/flat fine/medium – and proceeded to thin the shaft from the inside out. I used the coarse file to do most of the thinning and the fine/medium file to clean up/smooth out the interior
90 minutes later, 1/16th of an inch thinned, and AFTER cutting the height of the JLF shaft cover a bit (less than 1/4 inch?), the modded JLF shaft cover fit the LS-32 shaft nicely!
Needless to say, I’m NOT doing this again any time soon! I have two blistered fingers to show for my effort, too. I also have an unneeded Seimitsu dust cover as I am using the two dust covers that come with the JLF shaft cover…
The LS-32-01 is a nice stick but a pain to support.
Much, much easier to mod the JLF (extra springs for stiffness) and mount those in stick bases, too. I’m much more likely to buy transparent Seimitsu buttons before I get another LS-32…
Laugh.
A lot of work you did.
Have picture?
A lot of work is an understatement.
Wish they had this cover for real but if it doesn’t exist and you want it, then mod it!
That’s a truism I’ve learned again and again over the years as I’ve fixed things around the homestead. Half the fixtures you have in your home use modded (cut) screws in them. Half the doors have parts that are so hard to find you end up modding things instead of wasting time driving all over town wasting gas in fruitless searches. That’s what I ended up doing with sliding doors for a shower… Didn’t want to drive to the next town over to look for fixture parts that probably weren’t there so I MADE things that I bought from Home Depot fit my sliding doors!
But, back to the topic at hand –
Here’s a picture of my Hori Real Arcade Pro SE with the modded JLF Shaft Cover in place –
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/59272d4674.jpg
AND the tools used to do the mod –
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/2044208a50.jpg
The tools that ended up working for this job (pictured left to right) were a circular coarse file, semicircular flat medium file, and a Dremel (not pictured) with flat sanding head attachment. The shaft cover had to be shortened for the Seimitsu stick as well as thinned from the inside out to fit the stick.
After doing this mod myself, I can see why MKL didn’t bother to try to sell these.
Nobody’s going to pay you for the amount of effort it takes to fit these shaft covers to these joysticks!
You can also try Big Pockets. I bought a couple of his carbon fiber LS-32 shaft covers from him a few months back.
Was not aware of Big Pockets before I did this otherwise I would have used him… I did ask around to see if anybody knew of an LS-32 shaft cover but heard nothing about it.
To be frank, this is probably the only time I’ll do this mod.
I’ve only got the one Seimitsu stick and wanted extra protection for the shaft since it’s a collectible item.
I am, unfortunately, one of those people with high acidity in their sweat. I don’t sweat when I’m playing videogames but better safe than sorry!
There is actually a way to get a shaft cover on a Seimitsu LS-32 without doing an extreme amount of work like the people above have been mentioning. All one has to do is simply purchase one of each of the following:
- Seimitsu LS-40 shaft
- Seimitsu LS-40 shaft cover (color of your choice)
- Seimitsu LS-40 dust washer (color of your choice so long as it’s black)
- Seimitsu LS-40 actuator
- Seimitsu LS-40 spring holder
- Seimitsu LS-40 E-clip (a great thing to have considering the C-clip of the LS-32 is a BITCH to get on and off)
I picked up that one from slagcoin. slagcoin also mentions that an LS-32 with this mod “cannot pivot to touch the square gate”, but I don’t know if that means swapping the shaft fixes the spring pivot problem (the joystick “jumping” problem) that LS-32s have or something different. Regardless, Per from AkihabaraShop made a video showing that this is very possible and I doubt that he’d endorse something such as this unless it worked very well.
Hope that helped!
Eh? Widening the Sanwa shaft cover is a piece of cake (took me 10-15 minutes) with the right method, which isn’t yours.
When I said I didn’t bother to sell shaft covers I was referring to the custom ones I used to make:
http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/1107/69848831te3.th.jpg
http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/8895/s2020123.th.jpg
The problem isn’t the shaft cover but the new dust cover. Making one that is a perfect circle and has a sloped edge without a CNC router or a laser cutter is difficult and time consuming (widening the Sanwa shaft cover is a joke in comparison) and to make it worthwhile I would have to sell them for a price people probably wouldn’t be willing to pay.
Hi M K L, I know it has been a while and I´ve been trying to get to the posts were you explain how you did it but it seems they are not available anymore.
Can you tell me how you widened the Sanwa shaft cover so it can fit on a Seimitsu LS-32?
How did you sand it then? Which tool did you use? I know somebody in youtube posted a video where they used scissors on a LS-40 Shaft Cover.
User jdm714 mentioned in another post that:
Both GeorgeC and M K L have modified Sanwa Shaft Cover to work.
http://www.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=166190&p=7115778&viewfull=1#post7115778
http://www.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=222497&p=8230735&viewfull=1#post8230735
M K L even did Custom Shaft Cover for Seimitsu LS-32(-01) (he does no more).
http://www.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=166190&p=5649512&viewfull=1#post5649512
http://www.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=166190&p=7118641&viewfull=1#post7118641
http://www.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=153678
But none of these work anymore. So that´s why I ask you again.
Hope you can let us know. I would love to spend 10-15min doing this and no more. 
Thanks!
The basic way to widen the Sanwa JLF-CD shaft cover is to use small precision files.
You use a coarse round file to shave at least half the width of the plastic from the inside out until it securely fits the LS-32’s metal shaft. Then, you use a* fine file* (with flat side and rounded side) to smooth out the new interior you just carved. To make the thinning even, rotate the shaft cover as you shave the inside with the coarse file. You check your work every so often by slipping the shaft cover over the LS-32… It’s done when the JLF-CD fits your LS-32 without being tight. When you tighten the ball handle, the shaft acts to secure the ball handle. If you’ve done this right, that ball handle will never pop off nor will the shaft cover break. It will definitely save your LS-32 shaft from corrosion due to sweat.
Note: You will also have to shave something like 3/16 of an inch off the height of the JLF-CD shaft. The JLF shaft is physically taller than the LS-32 shaft so you can’t skip this step. Be very careful not to shave more off the height than necessary! I used a Dremel with a circular cutting tool to adjust the JLF-CD’s shaft cover height. (Push down and melt the shaft to the right height with the spinning cutter.) A flat coarse file would work as well, too.
That’s it… No big mystery. Anybody can do this with a decent file set.
For a one-off mod, this is cheap and only requires buying a JLF-CD set and having the files to do this… For multiple LS-32’s, it can be time-consuming but most of us don’t buy more than two joysticks at a time at any rate… or have easy access to a laser cutter.
The “laser cutter” is something most of us don’t have access to. MKL’s “method” doesn’t help anyone without the right tools.
Thank you GeorgeC!
For a second there I thought he used a *drum sanding mandrel *on a driller.
Thank you for taking your time in explaining me how to do it and which tools to use in detail. I really appreciate it.