Sorry don't know much about the difference between a 8 way and a 49 way. Can I get a tutorial on differences or somthing.
Welcome to the forums, Dave.
An 8-way stick has 4 switches - Up, Down, Right, and Left. If you press the joystick in the 45 degree direction, you activate both the Right and Up switches.
To picture how a 49-way stick works, picture a 7x7 grid. When the stick is centered x=4, y=4. (* on the diagram) This allows a slow, medium, or fast in each direction. If you were to push a little to the right and all the way up, you would get x=5, y=1 (# on the diagram)
_1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 #
2
3
4 *
5
6
7
More on 49-way joysticks in
the wiki.
A Tron stick is an 8-way with a special restrictor plate that makes it harder to hit the diagonals. (less zig-zagging on the light cycle stage) More on it in
the wiki.
A less expensive (and shallower to mount) option is to use a magnetic triggerstick hack like
Tony shows here or the
Import Flight Stick from Paradise Arcade (Ultimarc carries them, too) for the 8-way parts of Tron and switch to a dedicated 4-way wired in parallel for the light cycle stage.
If you decide to do autoswitching 4 to 8 way joysticks, Le Chuck has got in-game switching for Tron working
here.
Lots of good stuff to read on the wiki -- it will give you the background to understand what people are talking about in the forums and ask "non-noob" questions.

Scott