SFIV TE Fightstick - A Basic Mod

So I had an hour to kill last Saturday and wanted to see if I could do a basic stick and button swap on the TE fight stick. What with the arrival of DDP SDJ I've started to use the TE again and wanted to swap in some spare Seimitsu parts I had lying about.

A disclaimer first; this isn't about the aesthetics, I didn't have the time to mess about changing the artwork so the end result doesn't look all that sexy colour scheme-wise (certainly not a patch on Project Snorkle anyway). Maybe it's something I can change down the line. It was more about getting a familiar Seimitsu shmup setup for the 360 upstairs.

This post will be double entendre heaven I'm sure.

The only tools required (other than a spare stick and buttons) were: allenkey, Philips head screw driver and needle-nose pliers.

Here's the stock TE with a JLF stick (didn't bother checking the exact model) and Sanwa snap-in buttons, all in perfect nick. You just need to undo the six screws on top with an allenkey and lift up the lid to get at the innards.



Handily they colour coded the ground and signal wires for each button. Just note down which colour goes to which button before removing them. The wires were tightly fit so I had to use a needle-nose pliers to remove them, grab the metal clip rather than the wire itself. Had to press down on the black centre piece of the button while gently wiggling and pulling off the wires.



The JLF has a flat mounting plate very similar to an MS plate, it sits on top of a base plate that looks something like a pair of crossed SS plates. This base plate is welded to the metal lid. Just undo the 4 screws and disconnect the black cable from the 5-pin connection (the little bit of glue comes off easy).



A comparison of the JLF and LS-58-01 sticks. As mentioned the JLF plate is almost identical in size to the MS plate on the LS. Importantly the four outer mounting holes line up so that's all that matters. The JFL shaft is slightly longer too.



You'll notice above, the position of the 5-pin connection on the JLF is at the left whereas it's on the bottom on the LS. So I just needed to undo 4 screws (Philips head) on the top of the mounting plate which frees up the entire mechanism underneath the plate. Rotate the mech 90 degrees clockwise and screw it back in. All lined up correctly now.



So the Seimitsu parts were coming from a fully populated AWSD 2P CP sitting unused in a corner. Green and pink colours, neither really goes with the TE artwork but it's all I had. The buttons are all screw-ins except for the one closest to the stick base plate. A screw-in wouldn't fit here so I had to use a Seimtsu snap-in. Made sure to correctly reconnect the coloured wires. LS stick in place also.



And here's the finished article. The green and pink look ok against the top black background but not so good against the red lower half. But overall a very easy swap to do. Now I've got some tight Seimitsu action for the shmups upstairs.



Some DDP SDJ action on the Trini: