Competition Pro Joysticks

Just opened and serviced my collection of competition pro joysticks. On some joysticks, the fire buttons were not working well or at all. I noticed that my collection has two (or three) kind of fire buttons:

Back in a day, I remember having a Competition Pro with leaf switches on directions, too (and also the need to adjust the leafs often).

There’s a good guide on repairing joysticks at CPCWiki. Youtube is surprisingly silent on the subject, but here’s a short video fixing a Competition Pro with leaf switches on fire buttons and a longer video repairing a model with an autofire and microswithces.

It looks like my transparent model is the same as in the latter video. The fire buttons on this model are jammed down, and I was not able to restore them. The microswitches on this model are not “attached” to the joystick body, and looks like over time the plastic button containers wear to unusable state in this model… I wonder if it is a fake Competition Pro?

An other joystick of mine had problems with fire, too, but it was some wire issue or an issue with the joystick port connector. I stole the wire and directional switches from the transparent one, made sure the autofire is swithced to OFF position, connected fire wires to original leaf switches… and I even stole the rubber feet!

I also noticed that there seem to be other minor differences between the joystick generations:

The new generation (with microswitches on fire buttons) feel a bit more “tactile” when moving to directions. The older generation also makes a little “creaky” sound when moving the stick around. In my current setup, I’ve hooked the awesome new generation Competition Pro sticks to my Atari ST (and RetroPie emulators when needed), and the great older models to my Amstrad CPC.