🌈🍳Rid🍳🌈

In my very long search for a decent budget-friendly button, I think I may have found it, but the conspiracy runs deep.

Ok so the story starts with wittle ol' me doing endless research for a pet project bc I like to enthrall myself in a diy project for months on end from time to time-- sometimes I end up with a finished product, sometimes I don't. But, this time, I convinced myself I wanted to build a leverless (like really really badly). I hit a snag, however, once I find out sanwas are a teeeeensy little bit outside my budget range. All of my other parts costed about 150 brl (that's brazilian reals) and 12 sanwa buttons was going to cost me more or less that-- on their own. So I go into the depths of Aliexpress, looking at different button prices and reviews, all the while feeling fairly confident that I will find a decent budget option.

Because here's the thing: 8bitdo started off as a "ripoff nintendo controller company", Kailh started off as a "rip off cherry mx" company, and I thought that there was probably something like that for arcade sticks, but no cigar. What's worse-- all of the buttons I find are unbranded, much to my dismay bc that made distinguishing the different kinds even harder.

At one point I even look up "aliexpress button review" and what I get is a fairly discouraging video on a mystery button from aliexpress. But the video gave me a clue! The switch inside the plastic housing of the button in the video was different from the ones I had been seeing on the "copy sanwa push button" pages: which meant there are different types (albeit unbranded) of switches. In other words there's more than one type of unbranded chinese switch.

So I began looking at reviews, pouring over pin placements, noted the general shape and dimensions, compared them to reviews, until I happened upon a particular product review from korea-- one that praised the quality of the button and its cost effectiveness. More importantly, one that had a picture on it: of a fightstick with all four button slots commonly used for tekken (the "face buttons" of a fight stick) taken up by this mystery button.

《the mystery button》

Now, I'm no expert but I know a liiiittle bit about tekken--enough to know that many top players are Korean, and that they have a very active Tekken scene. From what I had seen they seemed kinda picky about their fightstick hardware, specially since they were used to playing in irl arcades.

《the review in question featuring an automatic broken english translation》

So obviously, I had to figure out what button this was and what kind of switch it used, so I noted the pin placement, saved the store page and went to sleep. A really easy way to find the button Im referring to is looking up "transparent arcade button" on ali express and making sure by looking at pictures that youre getting the one with the correct switch. I wasn't super sure if I could trust the review bc it's aliexpress and sometimes it feels like the reviews are faked.

Later, while looking up options for cases and stuff, I come across a brazilian custom arcade stick maker, which. That's Cool, y'know? But when I was looking at the catalogue, I noticed that he explicitly mentioned that he does not work with sanwas. I also later noted that the buttons he uses are transparent, and that he won't disclose the brand name, but asks people to trust him cus' the buttons are good.

"Oh interesting --WAIT-- HE'S ALSO USING THE ALIEXPRESS BUTTONS??" I say as I comically spit whatever beverage I had in my mouth at that moment. That was hyperbole, but I was surprised, cus that guy was making some nice stuff and none of his customers seemed to ever make any negative complaints on his twitter or on his insta. Upon closer inspection, though, it seemed that yes, he was also using the unbranded mystery button. I super wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to buy into a scam or some such so I look more into these.

I find out that the mayflash f300 leverless uses buttons with the same mechanical switch as those buttons, then I find out that the 8bitdo fightstick also uses those buttons. Notably, people don't really complain about them in the reviews either. It really seemed like any budget stick that did not want to have garbage buttons used these, and that's when I remember that the qanba q1 also had non-japanese buttons. So I check footage of a teardown and yeah! Same switch.

《8bitdo fightstick》 《mayflash f300》 《qanba q1》

Now, that finally gave me a specific chinese brand name to look at, qanba. So, I look through their store page on Ali and find that they sell transparent buttons with that same switch at basically unbeatable prices. Looking through the page some more I finally find the name of the mystery button: QANBA D-Lite buttons.

You can get a 24 pack of them for like 15 bucks if you look them up on ali. Another interesting thing to note is that they don't appear own a patent for the button, so different arcade part manufacturers in china just kinda make buttons like these to sell. That explains why they come in so many colors, and why so many budget brands use these in place of sanwa buttons when they gotta cheap out without hurting the quality of the product too much.

Not only that but it kinda seems like an open secret for some of the fight stick modding community that these buttons exist. Because if too many people get in the know, demand would make the prices skyrocket and we can't have that! (Could also be likely that people just don't know these buttons exist. Or both.)

Long story short, I ordered the parts and will soon have a fully functioning leverless featuring these buttons >:) Once it actually gets here lmao?? I'll try to post an actual review of these. I'm just glad I found out what the mystery button is, exactly

Or rather, they have been here and I just took a bit to start writing this, so!

I got:

-transparent neon yellow 24mm buttons
-transparent clear white 24mm buttons
-transparent clear white 30mm buttons

I think I've only ever touched qanba switches in the first place, buuut these arcade buttons basically have mechanical switches inside of them anyway, so I'll treat these buttons like a mechanical keyboard switch during this review!

The 24mm buttons pretty much everything I could have hoped for! They feature linear actuation (no tactile bump or audible click) and have a satisfying thock when I press them while inside my mdf case. The smoothness of the switch leaves a tiny bit to be desired compared to switches like the graywolf V4s featured on the haute g13, which are nigh perfect smoothness, but! There's a mechanical keyboard trick I've never seen anyone apply to these arcade buttons, which would be taking the switch apart, and gently lubing the stem and spring of the switch. With that in mind, there's possibly some untapped potential.

the resistance combined with the clacking of the plastic housing of the button creates a unique sound profile which I imagine are comparable to sanwas and seimitsus since they all feature similar switches with similar plastic shells of comparable construction.

You may have noticed I decided to talk about the 24mm and 30mm versions of the button separately and it's because I found that the 30mm buttons seem to all have an issue where the plunger scrapes against the side of the shell, which creates a creaking sound if you press it slowly. Out of the box this is an issue, but I found that if you lube the plunger gently along with the inner side of the button housing (kinda like with mechanical keyboard switches again), the creaking sound goes away.

Another thing to note! I've noticed that the way the mechanical switch is situated inside the housing is extremely reminiscent of sanwas, so if you were to desire an upgrade later down the line for whatever reason, you might be able to find original sanwa switches on aliexpress for cheaper (not the full buttons) and replace the switches while keeping the housing. Making these a compelling purchase in case you desire a build with transparent buttons but you dont want to pay the special sanwa button tax. There's a similar thing you can do with metallic buttons on aliexpress as well! woo :)

I don't really see myself seeking that out, though since I'm actually satisfied with what I got. Now all that's left is to check out the d-lite version of these buttons which could possibly feature an updated version of the switch? and updated housing aaand I also got those out of curiosity lmao.

I MUST know if there's any difference. There's no reviews out there and I'm in too deep! Until then I'll continue my little project with the buttons I got.

preview of what I've been working on teehee. This leverless is gonna fuck