I love this link, but the bottom part is like a brushed aluminum feel (like brushed aluminum zippo). after taking it out of the JLF, the white pivot(?) that you grease had black “dust” in the grease, I think it’s causing grinding on the black plunger. is this normal?
Can you post a pic of the Link base for me?
Does it have a matte feel to it?
yes I’d say matte is a good description. feels like it was machined, lots of little horizontal ridges that are extremely small. you can hear it if you put your nail down the shaft, but very fine. camera phone access only, this is the best I can do…
well, technically it was machined. It’s a turned part, so those tiny ridges will be ever present, just polished out as much as possible by the fab house.
That’s not the matte base I was thinking though, which had really bad friction and needed to be polished (short run of them, that’s why I asked since you may have had one). What you’re seeing could be just dust from fabrication being sort of cleaned off by the JLF components moving about it.
I would clean the shaft and components, regrease, and re-assemble. If it’s not deterring your play at all I’m not too alarmed at it. Maybe check it after some time, if it still gives you that issue I can maybe send you a new base to try out… perhaps that one’s got some extra roughness on the machining and wasn’t polished as much.
no problem, just wasn’t sure if anyone else had a jerry rig, or noticed the “grind” feel. mine was bought just a month ago, looks similar to the someone else’s pics above.
nah its hardly noticeable, buddy had a similar situation but he said his was due to the oversized actuator being in bad shape. thanks for the reply though, if it somehow gets really bad (don’t see that happening) I’ll update ya, friends and I love your product thus far.
Forgot to mention but I got the spare JLF part from you in the mail. It’s a little unfortunate that I already replaced it because I thought the forum was dead but I just wanted to say I still really appreciate the gesture 
Thanks.
Holy crap that took a while lol. Sorry about that.
No worries, gotta do what you gotta do given the situation/information.
If you go back, I hope the new bases serve you well!
Hello.
So I used the Link on my most recent stick and I can’t stop feeling like it has a little more ‘give’ than the original. Is that real or am I just imagining stuff? And is there a way to fix it (or is it even a problem).
Two questions to help us help you:
- What version Link is this?
- What do you mean by “give”?
Hmmm. I was unaware of versions. I got it not a month ago on FocusAttack together with the lanyard thingie, is there any feature that I should describe to have an exact match?
Give as in when the stick is centered and you start moving it to a certain direction you can feel that it moves a little before ‘engaging’ the spring’s resistance/shaft movement that will actually actuate the switches.
@coredump I found that the link feels a little different that a stock joystick. I think the added weight is to blame. I don’t think the deadspot has actually gotten bigger. I believe the different weight distribution makes you notice the resistance of the spring a lot sooner. It doesn’t really take long to get used to and the benefits of the detachable joystick far outweigh the learning curve.
@Murphy0X So I read some pages behind on this thread and I saw that deadzone is a thing that some people complained. I am most adapted to it now, it just feels very wibbly-wobbly. I also saw that some links got powder coated and that it helped. I was thinking on using some kind of tape or similar to make the bit that goes into the white actuator thing fell more ‘firm’. Any opinions on that?
If you got yours within the last month or so, you should have the latest-and-greatest version that doesn’t need powder-coating.
The problem with any “tape” is that it’ll wear down FAST.
I’ve had at least one each of what I call the first 3 versions of the Link (v1/original, v1.5/power-coated-base, v2/corrected); If you have issue with any extra deadzone (more prominent in the v1), what I found worked in the past is to use a pivot (the white part of the JLF) from a Mad Catz imitation JLF from either the Tatsunoko vs Capcom stick, or a Brawlstick. It seems that since the knock-off has slightly lower manufacturing standards, you can actually end up with a pivot that fits the Link better than a stock Sanwa pivot would.
Since I am aasking about the Link already. Where should I lubricate this when installing? I am moving it to another stick this week and have silicon grease available. Is it the pivot part or something else?
Are you ever planning on doing an LS-40 version of the Link?
Grease the pivot bushing a little, and you can grease the base of the link shaft (where the actuator slides up/down on) as well (very thin coat on here).
I can probably get more styles done now. I’d just need an idea of what’s popular and worth it to make.
For example, I made the LS-32 bases for the kickstarter, and they sell sloooooowly.
edit:
That doesn’t mean I can’t do a small 100 piece run of those base types. They’d just be more expensive than their JLF counterpart.
I personally wouldn’t hold my breath for it, as I believe that the LS-40 has nowhere near the use/popularity as the JLF and LS-32… but I’d love one (or two… or three…) as well. I swear by the LS-40 as my main lever, so yeah. 
So I got a Hayabusa today and did some testing and both the factory pivot and the link have the same ‘feeling’ on the deadzone department. I guess I was being too sensitive about it after all. Now it’s on the Hayabusa and working perfectly.
I’d definitely be down to own a gold or yellow LS-56 version some time within the next couple of years