Modding a Wii Hori stick with Sanwa Parts for Xbox 360: Part 5

[TravisNRG]

can you play cod with it?

[omari246]

been watching ur vids on this mod so far, great stuff. just curious as to why u choose to solider the buttons over push on connectors.

[MrKillerdangerous]

LOOOL

[falconpierce]

so i could just daisychain all the grounds onto one common ground?

[CoverlessTech]

@falconpierce If your PCB is common ground, yes.

[Lionheartghost]

Awesome, was wondering how to do all of that when reading guides. The videos helped a bunch, I have a better grasp of what to do if I ever want to mod my stick. I would have easily burned myself throughout the whole thing lol. 5/5

[apathylad]

kinda wish I had a better fighting stick...I wonder if I can find some modding services or something for my Hori EX 2. There's no way I'd be able to do this by myself. 0_o

[stupfat]

What type of wires are you using to attach to the PCB to the buttons?

[CoverlessTech]

Wire taken out of a cat5 cable.

[turboEk2000]

I'm trying to mod my tekken hori stick with sanwa parts just like you did. My question is does the hori stick share common ground and could I use the sanwa stick right out of the box. Meaning could I just wire up all the signal and then one wire to all the common ground. By the way I'm planning to use the tekken hori PCB since I'm just upgrading the stick and buttons. Any advice will help and your modification is very interesting. I don't think I would even try it. Thanks

[CoverlessTech]

It depends on the PCB if it's common or not. Each microswitch on mine had two wires connecting back to the PCB, that means it is non-common(it has a ground and a common for each one). If yours is the same all you need to do is get the JLF ready for non-common ground(watch the first bit of the video I made about it) then remove the wires from the hori stick and attach them directly to the jlf the same way they where attached to the hori.

[vtnwesley]

This may be a naive question, but what is the reason you would want to replace the buttons in one of these joysticks?

[CoverlessTech]

Better quality.

[vtnwesley]

"Better quality" doesn't mean anything. Are the buttons more responsive? More comfortable? More reliable after long-term abuse? I see a lot of hori modders on youtube, but no tales of how it makes the actual controller better than it's original state.

[CoverlessTech]

Better quality means all those things, well probably not "more comfortable", not really sure how a button can be comfortable, they are both convex if that is what you mean.

Sanwa is a Japanese arcade parts supplier, they supply parts for actual arcade machines and are considered the highest quality in the industry. Hori makes cheap off brand controllers and plastic things for the Wii.

[KoolAidManOG]

vtnwesley - Sanwa buttons are *extremely* sensitive and have very little physical resistance compared to Hori buttons. I own two HRAP EX sticks, one with Sanwas, another with Hori buttons, and IMHO it comes down to personal preference. I prefer Sanwas but if you like more resistance and physical feedback then I can see someone going with Hori buttons instead.

That said, both my sticks have octo gates on them, that's a mod that I cannot do without. Can't stand the square gates. :)

[vtnwesley]

Okay, THAT explains everything, and I can see why one would want to do that. I understand the buttons, but why don't most arcade sticks have a octo or circular gate? This just seems common sense to me. A square gate seems rather silly.

[CoverlessTech]

With a square gate you know when you are in every position (back, down forward, forward, ect) and every position takes up an equal amount of area in the gate. They all take up 11% of the area, with the octo and circle gate the areas of activation are all over the place. Image search "octagonal vs square gates" on google and you will see the diagrams. Square sounds silly at first but mathematically it's the best choice and is easy to use once you get use to it.

[bigfelon]

you did a very good job! 5/5

[oompaloompaluv]

great tut. 5/5

[NHKchan]

dang dude, great work

[Owner46]

if i wanted to put quick disconnects on the wires would it be much harder?

[CoverlessTech]

You can only use QDs to connect to the buttons and micro switches. You still have to solder to the PCB. It wouldn't really be any "harder". Soldering to the buttons is easy enough as it is anyways.

[Keysta7]

Awesome vid, i was wondering, how were u able to bypass the input lag on your HD tv?

[CoverlessTech]

I use a monitor with a 2ms response time. When there is no lag there is no need to bypass it.

[Keysta7]

Oh kool, is there any way that you can set your tv to do that? Thank you soo much for the help!!

[CoverlessTech]

It isn't a setting, more of a feature. You know when you look at specs for TVs and monitors there is always something called Response time or Refresh Rate. It's measured in milliseconds. It basically means how fast the screen refreshes the image, the lower the better.

If you have something like 10 milliseconds then it's very noticeable. If your TV has a bad RT the only way to get a better one is to get a better TV.

[VividFps]

I have Hori PS3 Fighting Stick 3 and having a hard time finding which gate to fit it. Do you know where i can find the 8sided gate to fit for it?

Thanks.

[CoverlessTech]

As far as I know there are no other gates for the Hori stick. Your best bet would be replacing it with a Sanwa JLF like I do in these videos. The FS3 and Wii Hori are exactly the same.

[wildfire3969]

aww I wanted to see you play with it

do all arcade sticks connect the jlf to a controller d-pad????

I thought they used 8 directions not 4!?!

[CoverlessTech]

I show it working at the end, it was to late for me to record play footage. You can connect a jlf to a analogue stick but it requires resistors and gives the exact same results.

The JLF only has 4 directions(just like any d-pad) to do diagonals you just hit two directions at the same time(forward+down id down forward). All d-pads are only 4 directions.

[sr4free]

Hey, I'm back with another question. What diameter are the sanwa buttons you put into this stick? I've seen most sanwa carriers have the snap in buttons in two diameters: 30mm or 24mm

[CoverlessTech]

30mm

[sr4free]

Nice tutorial. I know nothing about wiring and soldering aside from what I just learned by watching you, so maybe you can answer a question for me.

Would it be possible to wire an additional controller from a different system to the same stick? What I want to do is create an Xbox stick like you did and (if possible) wire a Dreamcast controller to the very same stick. That way, I have two plugs coming from the same stick; one for Dreamcast, one for Xbox. Is this technically possible?

[CoverlessTech]

It's doable. How it works is very depended on the controllers you use. Your best bet would be to go to shoryuken'f forums and check out the tech section. It's pretty technical and might be a bit advanced for your first time.

[Aonoror]

Awesome tutorial CoverlessTech.

If you have the time and patience can you please make a video tutorial on where and how to solder the jlf + sanwa buttons to a common ground 360 wired controller pcb?

I want do this but i have zero experience with soldering and i think i am too ambitious for this kind of work.

But a video tutorial might help me and other people as well to accomplish this.

[CoverlessTech]

I don't know why I didn't get an e-mail with this comment in it... sorry I didn't reply sooner. I do a show you how to wire the JLF in the 3rd part of the Cherry mod videos. I do 2(4?) buttons in this one. The other 2 buttons are pretty similar and the triggers are a little more work. I couldn't find the right resistors in time for this video so i couldn't do them.

Make sure to watch all my arcade stick videos, I do most of this all ready.

[TehPeaches]

Don't you have to be careful touching PCBs in joysticks and stuff? I was reading one tutorial that said when touching the pcb you should wear a grounding wrist strap

[CoverlessTech]

Not really, as long as you ground yourself before touching anything you should be fine. Technically I guess you should be wearing a strap but I have honestly never seen anyone ever wear one.

[chuang4u]

what did you do with the stock parts? could i purchase them from you on the cheap? : )

[CoverlessTech]

Honestly, I don't even know where half the joystick parts are. I have the buttons kicking around but the spring and some of the other small pieces for the joystick maybe thrown out by now. I'll have a look around for you though.

[chuang4u]

thanks! i'd appreciate anything you would be willing to part with.

[TehPeaches]

Do you know if the EX2 for 360 has the tabs in the buttons? I don't really feel like buying a dremel for that.

[CoverlessTech]

All the cheaper hori sticks have the tabs. They are actually all pretty much identical save for the EX2 only has 6 face buttons. You can take the microswitch out of the sanwa button and put int he hori button though.

[TehPeaches]

I could just use wires to connect the sanwa buttons to the PCB so I don't have to use the hori connectors in the sanwa buttons right? I've head if you use sanwa buttons with the hori switches its basically the same as hori buttons.

[CoverlessTech]

Basically a button are made of 3 parts; 1) The microswitch 2) the top part of the button 3) the bottom part of the button. You can take the microswitch out of the sanwa buttons and put them in the hori buttons(that way you have the hori casing but the sanwa microswitch). The hori button casing will fit back into the stick without grinding and it well feel link a sanwa because of the microswitch. Then just wire it up the same way I do in the video.

[kayele]

KEEP IT UP! Can I request a video mod?

[CoverlessTech]

Sure, what kind of mod?

[tony77tony77]

pretty cool man!!! I want to mod my Fighting Stick 3, what size buttons and what kind of Sanwa Stick should I get? I know there are alot of diff. ones. Sorry I'm new at this.

[CoverlessTech]

30mm sanwa snap ins and a sanwa JLF. The FS3 is exactly like this one.

[tony77tony77]

cool, thanks man!!! Do the Sanwa parts make that much of a diff.?

[fukil]

Thanks for the vids! I'll be modding a Fighting Stick 3 in a few weeks and probably getting 2 Wii Hori for cheap and modding them for 360/PS2.

Much cheaper than getting a stick designed for the console and modding it, I'd only be keeping the PCB anyway.

[CoverlessTech]

Modding out the parts in the FS3 is the same as this one so the first couple of vids should help you a lot with that one. Glad they helped.

[manflora]

how would yo do the turbo buttons for the xbox 360 pcb??

[CoverlessTech]

I didn't. I think you need a PCB that already supports it. I haven't seen anyone do it yet so I didn't bother hooking them up.

[5Rivers79]

great guide! do u have a guide showing how ot wire up the 360 wireless matrix controller?

[angryjoy]

I used quick disconnect connectors rather than solder it on directly. Make it much easier to swap out different pcb.

[misterskeleton]

awesome. thx for this!

[comansargent]

wow! you done it man!

congrads!

[zmanlip]

i wud save that 1 and not gut it lol. it looked like too much of a pain in the ass 2 make lol