Fine tuning 4-way joysticks, small overlap or deadzone?

[BadMouth]

I'm assuming perfect would be instant transition from one primary direction to another with no gap or overlap.
While theoretically possible, I doubt it would stay perfectly balanced in an arcade environment.

So is a tiny deadzone where no switches are tripped preferable to the risk of momentarily triggering both directions?
(using MAME)


Whole story:  I'm fine tuning a 4-way setting for optical switches, but when the sensitivity is set that low the aim of the IR emitters and receivers become an issue.  The stick will trip one direction sooner than another and I have to bend the components to fine tune it.  I'll get it good, but I'm not going to get it perfect enough that the stick transitions perfectly in all four corners all the time.  I have an octagon restrictor in now and it would be fairly easy to set it so it's dead in the exact corners, but registers as soon as you move either direction.

[Le Chuck]

This thread should be a poll.

I use a diamond restrictor on my fourways and like it tuned so that they hit both if I press really hard on the stick but just in normal movement there is no overlap.  I guess that would be as tiny a deadzone as possible.  Of course, that's with microswitches, not opticals.  Best of luck. 

[BadMouth]

Finished my 4/8 way switching circuit and for the sake of answering this question, I set one side to register the corner when it was pressed exactly in the corner of an 8-way restrictor.  The other side was set to register nothing when pressed into exact corner.  If moved at all, they'd both register a primary direction.

I tested using Burgertime, Donkey Kong, & Pacman.

While on a ladder in Burgertime, if you press left or right at any point other than the exact top or bottom of the ladder, your guy is going to get hung up regardless of what type of joystick is being used.

It's very subjective and I could tell very little difference between the two. 
In the end, I think a very, very short overlap worked slightly better than a very, very short gap.
But it's still very YMMV.  I wish it would have been more cut and dry.

[paigeoliver]

A teeny tiny deadzone seems to be the norm on brand new 4-way sticks out of the box. With a diamond shaped restrictor you are never going to spend any time in the dead zone anyway.