This may or may not be of interest to anyone following this thread, but I will mention it anyway. I drove to a couple of distant TRUs to find that they had some Hori EX2s in stock. I am keeping at least one for myself, but I have a few extras that I bought to hopefully make mine cheap/free. They run about $64 in store. Looking for $85 shipped (which is considerably cheaper than what I am seeing on ebay). If anyone is interested, drop me a PM - first come first serve if there is any interest.
On another note, I have been playing with my EX2 for about two weeks now. I had to switch my main from Sim to Balrog because of the square gate, but I am finding the game to be much easier to learn on a pad once you get comfortable with the button layout.