Hmm what do you all think of this theoretical layout..

[Arcade82]

Here's what I was thinking for my arcade cabinet:

in the middle: trackball and Pac-Man 4-way joystiq.
to each side of that: two Mortal Kombat style, Happs competition joysticks (the baseball bat style)
to the side of those: two ball top joysticks for games like Simpsons and Ninja Turtles

oh and of course buttons everywhere they need to be.

Do the ball top joysticks you get at ultimarc feel pretty good/close to the ones used on Konami 4 player games?

[DaveMMR]

Well it depends.... how wide is your panel?  Perhaps a mock-up will get you better feedback. 

[Dervacumen]

Size does matter.

Are you thinking of putting the 4-way above the trackball?  Make sure you have enough room so you don't slam your hand into it when you're playing Marble Madness or Golden Tee.

This is a two player panel?

Since I can't use digital drawing tools worth beans I mokced my panel up using felt, with joysticks, trackball, buttons all cut out to scale.  That way I could just place them around until I got an arrangement that felt ok.  Since I pretneded to mash the buttons as if playing on a real CP during the mock up phase, I found that felt worked well since it doesn't slip around too much.

[hypernova]

It's a 4P panel.  At first I thought he meant two styles of joysticks for P1 and P2, but he meant bat tops for P1/2, and ball tops for P3/4.

This is actually what I have.  I have Wico 8ways on P3/4 though.

[deadkenndys1105]

I dont like all-in-one pannels so I would sugjest changable pannels.