Has anyone ever opened up a Pelican Arcade Stick?

[Stobe]

My local console gaming store had a few Pelican Ultimate Arcade Sticks left for the Gamecube.  They marked them down to $19.99, so I picked one up for kicks.  I could obviously get a GC to USB converter and use it for arcade emulation, but I was wondering if anyone had ever opened one up to 'hack'?

I was thinking I could wire up 2 of these controllers to one keyboard encoder, and make semi-portable arcade controllers.  Each stick has 13 microswitches, so there should be no problem getting 2 sticks wired up to a keywiz or something. 

I haven't tinkered too much with it yet, because I don't want to mess it up until I checked here first.  Is there an easy/non-destructive way to open the box up?  I'm thinking worst case I could get the bottom off (which feels like thick cardboard rather than wood) and replace the bottom with a new sheet of wood or something.

I'm interested in any such hack attempts regarding these controllers.

Thanks,
Stobe

[Kremmit]

If you do a search for Pelican, you'll find a few bits about them.  Somebody stole the nifty clear buttons off one for their MAME cab, I remember.

[Knoxximus]

I got one and opened it up to move the buttons around.....before I realized that XMAME had a button config.

Anyhoo, I hope you are good with a solder gun because quick disconnects are non-existent on this thing.

[Timoe]

the bottom has little rubber pads.  These rubber pads are held on by adhesive.  If you take them off you can put them back on and the adhesive will still work.

Under these pads are the screws that hold that bottom board onto the cp.  I took one of mine apart and will use it for some junk CP someday.

[Stobe]

Thanks for the info.  I wish I had known that 2 days ago.

I removed the back 'box' and did all my soldering using only the hole in the back of the stick.  As you can imagine, the hole was smaller than my hands.  I had to do some nifty needle-nose work to get some of the connections made.

On my second stick, I will definately take the bottom off.  This will save me a ton of time.

Thanks again!
-Stobe