Just wanted to thank you bro, you saved me a lot of frustration. Hopefully the solution lasts until my Sanwa parts come in.
My SE has been failing to register down motions, so I opened it up and tried to glue down the washer. Glue seeped into the cavity, and when I tried to move the stick around the spring snapped off. So now I have no joystick at all (until my order from LizardLick arrives someday).
Are you talking about the physical button getting stuck when pressed down? If so, I had the same problem with a couple of my buttons. If you hit them anywhere but dead center you could feel some resistance in the press and sometimes the button would get stuck and not pop back out. Here’s what I did to fix it:
- Open up the casing and unclip the wires to the sticking button.
- Press in the two tabs holding the button to the casing and remove the button
- Press in the two tabs on the button that hold the plunger (part you press) to the button casing.
- Line the inside of the button casing and the plunger with a teflon based lubricant. (I use this lubricant. A dry teflon lubricant will not promote grime build up and is what I would suggest using on these buttons)
- Reassemble in the same manner you took it apart.
Once I did that, the problem was solved. I used the drip lubricant instead of the spray. You could possibly drip it in from the top of the button without opening up the stick but you run the risk of having too much in there and it pooling up.
-logga
As much as I want to believe that the majority of these sticks are good, I’m 2 for 2 on sketchy ones.
First stick was not unusable, but within a day the stick had a real funny feel and there were already button issues.
Just finished fixing my second stick last night (did the washer fix this time, as I’m gonna mod it anyways and I just need it to make it until I get parts) because it was worse out of the box stick wise than my first one, but no sticky buttons this time. A funny thing about this stick is that the ball-top is lopsided! Still, works nice now, and if it was like this out of the box I’d be very pleased, except for the ball-top.
Anyways, I’ve ordered the parts to Sanwa-ize it and when/if I get a TE I’ll have two great fighting sticks… as long as the PCB’s and whatnot hold up.
Like many others, I applaud the design, it was awesomely easy to get in there and fix, but really, the poor quality stick and so so buttons are a big mistake in a stick that sells for $80. If it was “REALLY cheap” ($40-$50) I’d be ripping it apart with impunity, with a smile on my face, but at that price (which I realize is not high for an arcade stick of this type) I expected better.
Hey Blaque, I tried mine last night with a buddy, and it’s terrible!
Using the adapter with the X4 (which I love, by the way), my friend could hear me just fine in the party chat, but I couldn’t hear anything at all from his end. Plugging the X4 into a normal 360 wireless controller worked fine both ways for us, so I doubt there was anything wrong with the volume/settings between us, and I’m beginning to think there’s something buggy with my SE’s headphone components. I still have my original 360 headset, so I’ll try plugging that into the SE via the adapter tonight, to see if that works any better. I’ll try to remember to send you an invite too.
Well, my stick has been at MadCatz since 25 Feb. I called to check on my RMA and have been told my stick is un-repairable as is, s they are waiting on replacement joysticks to fix it. This sucks!!! They should already have had replacements available when they knew sticks were coming in for repair…now I have to wait longer. Thanks MadCatz for a defective $86 including tax arcade stick…and thanks gamestop for issuing a corporate policy of no returns allowed forcing everyone to wait on repair:mad:
sorry to hear about your story…
i think capcom should’ve scratched out MC, and directly teamed up with Sanwa Denshi to make these sticks… we’d probably see less of these problem threads…
from what i gather, the MC sticks & fightpads are pretty much at a 50% fail rate… (joystick and button failures, both TE and SE editions)
pretty daymn embarrassing, if you ask me…
Damn I just called to return mine, it’s going to take so long for me to be able to play SFIV with a stick =/
I finally got the one I won on eBay and I must say its a definite upgrade. The only quirk I have is that my Y button (XBOX 360) seems to be a little harder to push/gets jammed while the other buttons are not. I’m starting to get used to it. I’m not really concerned though because once my parts come in from LizardLick I’m going to replace the stick and buttons.
Why would the TE edition have joystick and button failures? It uses Sanwa parts.
I am sure Capcom won’t be endorsing MadCatz again. This is complete bs. They obviously did not test the sticks because most peoples are failing within hours or right out the box. Once they issued the statement that they would fix your stick “asap”, they should have got replacementson immediate order.
I sent my stick in quickly and hoped for a quick turnaround since I am in california but now my stick is awaiting parts:mad:
They should be putting a sanwa joystick in just for my inconvenience. Imagine buying acar and having a recall where you drop it off and then await parts:mad:
I got my stick yesterday. Straight away I noticed the joystick would stick all the time it was really annoying walking to the left on its own. So I came online and found this thread and about the washer problem, so I opened it up and after just one day (well half a day anyway) this is what I found (this is the PCB being scratched for those who don’t know where or what it is):
http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/8796/photo1yds.jpg
So, I did the fix thing and glued down the washer (what a pain in the ass). Then when I put it all back together I had no left movement, it just wasn’t registering when I moved left on the joystick. I then thought it was completely F**cked, but I just opened it up again give it a quick blow and clean and put it back together and now its working fine (thank god). I’m going to get Sanwa parts for sure still though, just that everywhere seems to have a 2 week waiting list to get them =(. Hopefully these stock parts will hold out untill then.
imagine buying a car but then having to tow it home cuz it don’t work.
Yeah tell me about it. MadCatz is leaving a bad taste in everyone’s mouth this time around
You mean they didn’t before?
Doubtful. MC has their PR on it and they’re obviously sticking to the story that only a “few” sticks had issues. But for the most part everything is working perfectly and they remain to be sold out.
Regardless of the issues, that capcom will probably never really see, they’re going to continue seeing that TE’s are sold out, and the SE’s and Pads are still in high demand right now. If everyone stopped buying them, then maybe we might make a dent.
But nope, everyone’s still buying from MC, so they’re doing well in other ppl’s opinions.
I can see some of your points. Their PR is obviously using creative wording. Only 50 to date huh…maybe so, but these things have a ver high fail rate…by no means does it appear to be isolated. As far as sales, they sold out de to the promise of quality and the fact that they underestimated the demand. I know in my case though that regardless, I am pissed that I have to sit here and wait.
A “few” sticks. What a joke.
No offense to anyone involved, but it would be really easy to wonder if that PR guy was hired at mad catz, via hiring bonus straight from the Red Ring of Death PR team at Microsoft…
Truthfully, I doubt the dude lied when he said that only a “few” people are having issues. But the fact is, he is just misinformed. I have worked for, and continue to work for many major consumer electronics companies…
This device, given all the reports, obviously has a very high rate of failure. I’m sure mad catz is being as quiet as possible about it, in order to minimize shareholder fallout in this economy. I know I know Mr. PR guy, you folks already had a big meeting where some brainiac said “just because people are complaining about it on the internet, doesn’t mean its a big problem. People only go to the internet to complain anyway. Let’s wait to hear back from the head of tech support on how many calls we are getting, then we can assess the severity of this issue.”
What’s sad is that given how many people are experiencing issues (myself included), and given Mad Catz’s previous perceived reputation, that they really aren’t doing anything about it.
So PR guy listen up:
When I say not doing anything about it, I don’t mean about fixing the sticks. Fixing the sticks is a given, and isn’t the issue. The issue is, that you are doing NOTHING to help your business image, or restore any faith in your products for any of your customers experiencing issues.
For instance, my personal SE fight stick is broken. The joystick grinds, and one of the buttons stopped working entirely. Mad Catz solution: send me a pre-paid shipping label (sans box, gee thanks) and I get to wait 2-3 weeks before they return it to me, repaired.
What does this do in any way to restore my faith in Mad Catz? I’ll tell you, NOTHING. I was hesitant to buy this item, because in the past, everything I have ever purchased from Mad Catz, was substandard crap that broke. I definitely can say at this time, unless something changes, I won’t be purchasing from Mad Catz again…
A better solution? Send me a working unit, to swap with mine, in a more reasonable time frame.
So here is the real logical folly of it all, Mr. PR guy:
If only a “few” people are experiencing this issue, then I would think it would be very very much in your company’s best interest to minimize all the massive PR fallout that you have had (which should be easy to do, given how “few” people are experiencing this) by taking more drastic measures to make your customers happy, and enable them to want to buy another one of your products later. Mark my words: In this economy, companies that have a short sighted business approach such as this, will not survive. People do not have disposable income to buy crap that breaks. Unlike years past, there isn’t necessarily another sucker lined up waiting to buy your wares. Companies will need to start relying on brand image, and repeat customers.
Here is why I speculate these “more drastic” measures are not occurring.
#1 someone in upper management there, is short sighted, like I just mentioned
#2 the problems are systemic, and they do not have large enough quantities of “fixed” product coming off of production lines to fill retail channels, let alone replace customers units with.
#3 they probably are having trouble getting accurate metrics for the failure rates of the units, and some genius has deemed it more cost effective to repair units as they come in, than retool the manufacturing line, and lose even more time getting retail channels filled with product.
So yeah, go ahead and add me to the list. +1 broken SE stick. If I were a major shareholder of Mad Catz (I do not own and have never owned any Mad Catz stock), I’d be damn sure to try and get on their quarterly conference call and ask about the real failure rate of these devices.
-Freq
I do gather that using their company discounted shipping account to ship your stick to them and having someone open it up to replace and seal the washer (via hot glue or superglue… whatever), then use their company discounted shipping to ship it back to you, is probably the cheaper way to go about it than to give you a new unit.
But I’m afraid your PR rant will fall upon deaf ears. Not like MC is going to visit this thread, let alone the forum. Markman probably has other things to tend to. And MC is more concerned in covering this up =P
Its ok if it falls on deaf ears. I’m not happy, but I didn’t mean to rant. Just giving my opinion, calling it like I see it. When they go out of business, because in an economic depression, their products are known to be inferior, hopefully someone will learn from it.