How to change your joystick gate - easy fightstick DIY

Many arcade sticks come with a stock Sanwa lever, and this vid demonstrates how to change the gate to give you a different feel. Newer gates (but not all!) have replaceable inserts so you just have to change the center portion. If you are changing the gate on a Sanjuks V3, you'll need a screwdriver. Super simple and inexpensive mod. Experiment with what feels best to you.
Gate changing really only applies to Japanese-style levers (like Sanwa, Seimistu, Sanjuks V3, etc.). Korean levers are a bit different in their construction.

[@verybluecar]

please make a mod guide for Korean levers

[@HushMySweet1]

It's definitely on my video to-do list at some point. Thanks for watching!

[@alecblack3845]

It's going to be my first time building a fight stick and I have some basic parts at the moment. What exactly is the benefit of changing the gate?

[@HushMySweet1]

Good question. Most people "ride the gate" when they are learning stick. You can influence how the stick travels with your gate, so it can help you with your special moves in regard to your choice of character/game. For example, if you play charge characters, most people prefer a square gate to help them find the down/back corner quickly. If you play a character with lots of half circle or 360 motions, maybe you would prefer a circle or octagonal gate. Really, you can play any character with any gate, but these are cheap enough to experiment and find the one you like for the game and character you play. When in doubt, square is a good default, but I do like these newer rounded square gate (squircle?) options. Good luck with your build!

[@alecblack3845]

@@HushMySweet1 Tekken and if that's the case, sounds like this would benefit more Street fighter or dragon Ball fighter z. Thank you so much for the reply!!

[@HushMySweet1]

@@alecblack3845 You can use whatever lever you want, but I see a lot of Tekken players use Korean levers and those don't have a gate at all (they use like a grommet system). If you don't have a K lever and have something like a Sanwa JLF or Hori Hayabusa and didn't want to fully replace, you can actually get an Otto DIY V2 kit for those particular levers. That mod kit will change up the joysticks to make them more in line with Tekken standards.

[@andrewlingle8985]

Hey, I have a couple of the Sanjucks V3 Premium for an arcade cabinet. I am trying to restrict one of the plates for use with games like pac man. Do you know where I could get a gate to restrict it to only up, down, left, right?

[@HushMySweet1]

Not off the top of my head. (I don't think I've ever heard anyone using a premium lever like that for PacMan, lol, nice!) Maybe you could inquire on some of the fightstick discords? And just spitballing here, but I wonder if someone could 3d print some sort of gate that would work for that purpose. IDK though.

[@MonkeyBall2453]

Bro I can only get three of the four tabs to press

[@HushMySweet1]

Pull up gently as you do it? If that fails, maybe get a buddy to help so you can each tagteam two of the tabs simultaneously.

[@MonkeyBall2453]

@@HushMySweet1 I finally got it thanks

[@jovandijp]

Are dobe 6in1 customable too?

[@HushMySweet1]

I don't know what the inside of that stick looks like. I doubt it's a Sanwa JLF or similar branded lever, so I would doubt that you could easily customize the gate with one of these. But IDK for sure. You'd have to open it up and look at the lever.

[@ilikestamps2978]

Thank god for this. More people need to realize square gates are bad

[@migz101199]

For tekken players, this aint the case. Square gates are a godsend