Custom fightstick

In August of 2009, I decided I really wanted my own custom arcade quality joystick, mainly for fighting games on Xbox 360.  Actually, this passion had been with me for awhile, and I had built a crude stick way back in about 2001 or 2002 for my PSX. 

That stick sucked.  It was made out of MDF and plexiglass, and the workmanship was a joke.  For this current stick, I wanted something I would be proud to show off to people.  I started by having my buddy who works at a machine shop fab me up a case out of aluminum.

The case is a tank compared to most sticks found over at shoryuken.com, which are mostly made out of wood or MDF.  This case is sturdy, light, and straight.  After the case was done, I took my old Happs parts I had from my old stick and wired them up to a MadCatz Xbox 360 PCB I got at Gamestop for $15 or so.

The wiring took longer than it should have, mainly because of my shitty soldering skills and my shitty soldering wand.  I used hot glue to secure the PCB to some wood posts so I didn't have danger of shorting out anything on the case.

Here is the stick completed.  All of this was about a year and a half ago, and I never really finished the stick.  I never added an Xbox 360 guide button, a headset jack, any artwork, and I never plugged up the last two holes (I told my friend to drill eight, which was wrong). 

Now Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is out, and I have the fight stick bug again.  Here is my list of things to do to complete the stick hopefully in the very near future:

1. Re-wire everything (use a common strip for the ground, not daisy chained
2. Secure the PCB to the case with screws or real mounting posts (no hot glue)
3. Wire up a real Xbox 360 guide button
4. Wire up a headset jack
5. Replace the cheesy grommet in the front with a real USB passthrough jack
6. Smooth out the sides of the case to hide the rivets
7. Get art printed on adhesive vinyl