hey everyone- this might not be the perfect place for this post- but it's close enough.
I've been playing SF4 with a USB Saturn controller I got off of eBay. Like a lot of people I thought the D-pad was a lot looser than it should have been. it made it really hard to do certain charge attacks (Boxer mostly). After comparing it to my old american Saturn2 pad, I decided to take the controllers apart and switch the d-pads.
Once I had the control open, I discovered that there are 2 major differences in how the d-pads are assembled.
1) The USB controller has a small screw connecting the front and the back of the d-pad. It's not necessary due to how tightly the pieces fit together and all it seems to do is prevent the 2 pieces from being closer together.
2) The L/R triggers on the board are lower than the original control. The old buttons won't hit them trigger. To fix this, they added some foam padding to the bottom of the buttons to extend their reach. That's why the L/R triggers seem so stiff- because there is a surface between you and the trigger that compresses well before the button does.
In my initial fix, I replaced the whole d-pad with the one from my old controller. For the 2nd control, I just removed the screw. They both feel the same.
To me, it made a noticable difference in how easy certain commands were (DP). I haven't addressed the L/R triggers yet- it wasn't a big deal to me
For fun- I also attempted to transplant the d-pad of a US saturn controller into the USB control. The fat, unloved saturn control is my control of choice. Unfortunately something doesn't mesh right. It either sits too low, or the housing is too snug. I could pull off the attacks I wanted in game (jumps, DP, FB, etc), but the pad was very stiff and didn't feel like you were making the commands. I thought i might try to adjust to the stiffness, but I noticed that the controll had some serious difficulties navigating simple menues, etc. I'm going to look into shaving down the edge of the d-pad to make it have a smaller diameter- but i'm expecting this to be a lost cause.