New guy-question about modifying joysticks

[Stormy151]

Hi everybody.  I'm starting on the long process of designing/building my own cabinet.

Is it possible to modify a regular joystick into a top fire button stick?
 
I really like the idea of the 4-way/8-way Ultimarc T-Sticks, but I LOOOOVE to play Assault, which really needs 2- 4 way top fire sticks.  I'd like to be able to switch them to 8 way sticks to play other games though.

From what I've seen, the shaft of most sticks is solid, so I could maybe make a handle that "snapped" on with the top fire button and an umbilical cable that plugged into the panel- but I'd like to avoid that.  

Is there another way?  Or am I thinking about this too hard and just should get a couple 8 way top fire Happ sticks and 4 way restrictor plates?

[menace]

I ended up doing the umbilical thing on mine (and like you it wasn't my preference) but at the time it seemed the thing to do.  If you have access to a top fire handle (the atari and C64 had a bunch) you could hack that handle onto a hollow handle made from small diameter pipe like they use in lamps.

of course the simplest way would be to get the 8-way top-fires with restrictor plates--just throwing out some options.

[eightbit]

People have done this, especially for making tron type trigger sticks.It either requires that you have a hollow shaft for the wire from the button to get under the panel or for a shaft with a groove in it to accomadate the wire. Because of the t-sticks threaded shaft I'm not sure how you would get the wire past the threads using the groove method or if you could get someone to make a hollow threaded shaft.

I would go with menace and just buy the topfires with restrictor plates.