Ahahah…yeah, it’s just a play on words type of thing. Actually pretty stupid but it kind of fits me in a way. Like you said, I’m obviously not Japanese, but Japanese the language itself plays a large part in my life. A fair amount of my Japanese friends have probably never heard me speak English and don’t really see me as American, but at the same time, not as a Japanese (we’re living back in America now though).
aaah, got it. I thoguht it might be a play on words like that, but wasn’t sure. If you can know people for a while and never have them hear you speak english, you must be pretty good though. I can carry on normal conversations and get around fine when I’m there (my wife is from Japan so we visit a lot), but I’m defintely not good enough to not need to dip back into english, haha.
You said you’re living ‘back’ in the states now, did you live in Japan for a while? We’ve been contemplating moving there for a while, but I’m not sure about the whole job situation. Not sure if my Japnese is good enough 
Anyway… I better post something back on topic, haha. Um… I hope the TE version of the stick doesn’t have any of these problems, cuz I dropped more money to get one than I probably should have, haha. Don’t want a defective stick after all that…
I can’t believe they are actually expecting customers to open it up and fix it themselves… what kind of customer service is that??
Mad Catz official response regarding the Arcade FightStick (standard edition)…
(also added to OP)
A very small amount of users have experience problems with the sticks responsiveness.
Mmmmm hmmmm.
Uh oh… did you Ebay one for $400? gulp
so a bit of an update on my stick. the epoxy bonded and now the stick is smooth with no chance of that fucking washer scraping the pcb. however, i mentioned that i fixed this before i even plugged it in since i knew there was a problem before using it for play. so now that i plugged it in, the microswitch that registers left inputs works about 80-90 percent of the time. the switch itself get’s depressed, but no “click”. now i wouldn’t mind those odds if we were on a roulette table in vegas, but for playing any fighting game this is absolutely unacceptable.
what i would really like to see is someone take pictures or videos of their supposed “non-defective” stick. i mean actually disassemble the stick so i can see how the washer is sitting. considering how the washer is placed, with absolutely no attempt to secure it, i’m almost positive that ALL, every single one, has this washer defect. i feel like the ones who report no problems aren’t familiar with what to be on the lookout for. also on the washer’s edge, there is a smooth side and a very jagged side. maybe they don’t feel a problem because the smooth side is making contact with the pcb as opposed to the jagged side (thus “smoothly” scraping the pcb). they don’t feel a problem, but it’s still there and will only take just a while longer to destroy the pcb.
so in summary, i’ve successfully “fixed” the washer problem, only to find a faulty microswitch. what gets me angry is that there was no way to tell if there were problems with the microswitches without fixing the washer first! so i guess my warranty is officially void and i’m stuck with a lemon. super, fucking, awesome.
my stick that i got yesterday seems ok… i used it for at least a couple hours yesterday however due to all these problems i ordered some new buttons/stick
Haha, I DID ebay it (two actually), but luckily it was before the price got way up there. I definitely paid over retail though, and to me it was worth it to have one in the first run without delays. But after seeing that people actually ARE paying 400+ for them, I may not have the scond one for long, haha.
Would’ve liked something like “Future batches of the SE FightStick won’t have these washer issues, 100& confirmed”.
And I feel sorry for the Europeans that don’t know any english, no calling for them 
That’s exactly what I was thinking- I’ve seen the pictures and it looks like whether or not you have the sticking problem, the washer scraping the pcb is still a big issue. In a separate article their PR said it was just a small number and NOT related to a design issue, but if they aren’t securing that washer and it’s causing problems, what else do you call it. It’s not like the method they used to secure the washer just failed for a few people… it’s the fact that the design of the stick didn’t call for it to be secured.
As far warranty stuff- didn’t they say they were commited to fixing the sticks of people with issues even fi they opened it up and voided the warranty? I thought I read that somewhere.
That’s what I was thought as well. I need to know this, so I can open it up and check.
LOL. Well, Congradulations on your TE’s! I definitely can’t see myself spending that much on just one stick, even at the $250 range it was initially for. I opted to buy 4 HRAP EX / HRAP3s instead.
But for profitability, buying them at $250 still yields a damn good profit now. Too late for me now, but if you sell one of yours you’ve pretty much brought one of your TE’s back down to retail :wgrin:
Indeed ! I’m glad I speak English fluently.
That’s good news, seeing that they recognize that there is actually something wrong with the stick(or some of them). But it would still suck to be without a stick for 4-6 weeks that fixing it will take. Might as well just fix it yourself or get Sanwa parts for it.
I don’t know whether this has been discussed or not, but I just got back from picking up my stick. So I plug it into my PS3 and nothing happens, it doesn’t respond at all – as if no power is getting to it; the stick and buttons don’t respond and the home button doesn’t work (and it’s unlocked).
^^ the point for a lot of us was to have a stick that works without having to spend a larger amount of money for a hrap, te, or on additional parts to mod it with. i hope this concept is not completely lost in people’s minds.
edit: this was in response to phantom2k
Hi,
I’m from Australia, and have a SE stick pre-ordered from cdwow.com.au. What should I do in regards to warranty if my stick arrives damaged? Or do you guys think I should just cancel my order and purchase a HRAP3 or something? is it easy to swap the stick in the SE? I have no experience in modding and don’t wanna risk breaking something.
I think it was a rep saying something along the lines of, as long as you don’t mess with the “inards” your warranty should be valid. If they’ll fix units with the sticker broken, you can probably look inside without voiding. Who knows, tho, really? In print, it says opening of any sort will void the warranty. So…they might fix them, or they might not.
My stick has got the same issues talked about here. The stick doesnt get stuck, but sometimes I hear it start to scrape when moving left. Pulling the stick up and down a few times usually stops it, though. Earlier today, LT and RT stopped working, but came back after I unplugged and plugged it back in.
I was about to just order a new joystick for it, but LT and RT going in and out like that worries me. No idea what’d cause that, so I’m not going to play around trying to fix it.
Actually, I saw HRAP 3’s going on amazon.com for like 89 bucks which is not a whole lot more than the SE. Seems like if you’re gonna mod it with sanwa parts anyway, why not just go with that and avoid the issues. I know…it’s uglier…but still :bgrin:
EDIT: sorry, didn’t realize you said people who DON’T want to mod. Still- the same principle works whether you want to mod it or not. The price difference isn’t that large.
i suppose you’re right manman. i meant more specifically for the 360 though. the se stick is still a few dollars more than a hori ex2, but i opted for it because i’m anticipating them becoming quite rare (plus i already have an ex2). it’s shitty for people who spent more on an se stick over an ex2 for this reason, only to find numerous defects.
but you’re definitely right on the ps3 side of things.