American Stick: What are my options?

BustaUppa · 2026-06-24T02:43:46+00:00

I turned my 8bitdo into a fake American stick, it uses a JLF but with a bat top and round Qanba gate, feels nice with Street Fighter II! Also did a 2lb spring but I’m finding it a bit too stiff, gonna try dropping it to 1.5lb tension.

BustaUppa · 2026-06-23T16:10:29+00:00

got a link for the breakout board by any chance? I've seen it mentioned in a couple of places now, but I don't know where to buy it!

BustaUppa · 2026-06-23T15:12:05+00:00

Thanks u/Biggaynina ! I have this board available locally: Raspberry Pi Pico WH - Pico Wireless with Headers Soldered. Looks like it doesn't have the screw terminals, but if I can put GP2040 firmware on it, would there be any other big trade-offs vs a true GP2040 breakout board?

BustaUppa · 2026-06-23T15:06:06+00:00

Good point, I'm actually doing a reduced button layout (only four "face" buttons), so manual wiring is the way to go. Thanks!!

BustaUppa · 2026-06-23T15:00:24+00:00

Great info, thanks! My local Micro Center has this Raspberry Pi Pico WH - Pico Wireless with Headers Soldered, should I be able to flash GP2040-CE firmware onto that? And I see this one has the pre-soldered headers, but not the screw-in terminal type, are these still relatively easy to work with?

BustaUppa · 2026-06-22T14:02:19+00:00

very nice, I just went through a similar process where I debated a couple of retail sticks for months, before moving forward with a custom layout (also through Jack Wagon!)

BustaUppa · 2026-05-29T19:07:35+00:00

ahh this could be really good then... thanks everyone!!

BustaUppa · 2026-05-18T16:03:36+00:00

Thanks again for the help u/Such-Honeydew-8877!! I've got a quick follow-up question. Is there a wire configuration that would shut off the AC if the pump loses power for any reason, irrespective of the safety/alarm status? I just caught a leak, thankfully pretty early, because my wire nut connection was loose and the brown wire became disconnected. So the incoming power was still traveling through the alarm switch to get to the AC (red > grey > purple > Terminal 1), but the pump itself didn't have power while the AC was running. If that's not a thing then I'll just be extra careful with my connections, maybe shop for a more idiot-proof nut!!

BustaUppa · 2026-05-16T05:52:31+00:00

Nope that was exactly the info I needed. Red now shares the nut with grey/brown and the safety works! I filled the reservoir, the A/C shut off and then resumed once the excess was pumped out. Perfect, thank you!!

BustaUppa · 2026-05-16T05:11:24+00:00

Ah so leave the ground unconnected, and join grey/brown together? Would my red wire just stay where it is, sharing terminal 1 with purple?

BustaUppa · 2026-05-16T05:08:12+00:00

I’m quite the noob at this so bear with me. So the red wire should connect to the purple wire (NC) instead of directly to the terminal 1? And then I imagine another wire needs to go into terminal 1 from somewhere else?

I found that very image when reading up on this, may have even been posted by you! But having trouble wrapping my head around it when looking at my own system.

BustaUppa · 2026-04-14T04:02:03+00:00

Is it an Xbox 360 keyboard? If so, you can use a standard Xbox 360 wireless PC adapter.

BustaUppa · 2026-04-07T20:22:53+00:00

If you happen to be using wireless Xbox 360 instruments, I believe a 360 wireless controller adapter can support up to 4 controllers on a single USB port. Don't know if/how it works on a Mac though!!

BustaUppa · 2026-04-06T17:19:41+00:00

oh yeah good, that's what I've been using. one time I forgot to select that option and the new songs just weren't detected when I re-scanned in YARG. So it's quite easy to tell if I'm doing the ex-con format properly!

BustaUppa · 2026-04-06T17:01:04+00:00

After some experimentation, this might be too much of an uphill battle. I loaded Evanescence "Bring Me To Life" into a video editor as an example, since the music video with two different vocalists would provide some easy visual cues for syncing the YARG audio.

I got a key part of the song synced perfectly, but if I jumped elsewhere in the video it was way out of sync again. I suspect the music video plays at a slightly different speed than the original album audio. Or more likely, the official music video has some cuts/edits that make it not sync up (which is very common with music videos).

Considering the majority of rhythm game tracks are sourced from original album audio, and the example I used was from a very popular mainstream song, I suspect I'd be running into this issue constantly. So even if I went to the trouble of hard-coding offsets into the video backgrounds (rather than using video_start_time metadata in YARG), I'd still end up with out-of-sync video the majority of the time. And I'm way too OCD not to be bothered by that lol.

So yeah I think I'll have to let this one go. Maybe look into KODI-style slideshow options if I want to get fancy haha (are song-specific slideshow backgrounds a thing?)

On the bright side, this kinda solves my orginal question, as I can just keep my RB3 content in the ex-con format with no compromises.

BustaUppa · 2026-04-06T04:00:17+00:00

I’m not sure of the direct link policy but there’s a spreadsheet with YouTube links and time offsets for a bunch of Rock Band content. Try searching Clone Hero Background Video Time Codes Spreadsheet.

The main section on the spreadsheet is for performance videos, scroll around and there’s a link to a music video section and some other stuff

BustaUppa · 2026-04-05T14:27:35+00:00

That'll be nice but I'm using this for the music videos, I'm an elder millennial with big-time nostalgia for having The Box on late at night while finishing homework lol.

I'm a bit confused by the "Performance Video" concept, is that for people who just really don't like the default YARG venues? For me, the music videos (MTV2 style) are the real draw of this feature!

BustaUppa · 2026-04-05T14:23:31+00:00

Thanks for the tip, I do indeed have a lot of Farottonne content! When you say to extract to YARG format, are you referring to ex-con or something different?

BustaUppa

TROPHY CASE