Hmmm, some of these posts are a little worrying.
I haven't received mine yet but that isn't surprising since I asked for very cheap shipping.
I asked the guy to confirm when the joysticks had been despatched but so far he hasn't (bad sign). However he has at least given me good feedback on Ebay so he must have received my money.
I'm a bit concerned that the shaft lengths vary. Are they all the same colour? I thought from the picture that all the joysticks were the same. A shaft that is shorter than the Ms PacMan/Galaga reunion shaft is going to be very short indeed.
I don't think it really matters if more than one leaf switch can be activated at the same time as Mame can block that through software. You can also bend the leaf switches to make the joystick less sensitive. However what is important is that all the joysticks have a diamond (or better still 4-leaf clover) shaped restrictor.
As far as I'm aware you cannot retrofit the Reunion sticks with leaf switches. However you may be able to fit Happ's (unfortunately rather expensive) optical modules to them.
He never confirmed my order, either. It's surprising how many sellers these days don't do that.
I don't have calipers or anything, so take my measurements with a grain of salt.
Of mine, both the tall and short are chrome with red ball tops. The ball tops are about 1.25" in diameter, which agrees with the Reunion stick. However, the happ site says the reunion stick is 2.01" from the base to the top of the stick, including the ball. My short shafts are approx 1.75" and the tall ones just under 2.75".
The base plate restrictors on mine are malformed (Taz, I see what you mean; unless your restrictor is a different piece, no need to measure, thanks.). However, there is a restrictor hole on the bottom where the actuator moves. On 3 of mine there is the suggestion of a clover leaf, and on the 4th it is perfectly round. So I guess I have 3 4-ways and 1 8-way. (The round one was the first one I looked at.)
The clover leaf does somewhat restrict movement of the actuator. Leaving the leaf switches as they came, it easily hit the diagonals. By bending open the switches some, I was able to get pretty much a 4-way behavior, but unless I've overestimated how easily it is for a leaf switch to make contact (likely since I know nothing about them and have no encoder to test them on yet), they have to be pretty far apart. This leaves a large dead zone for the stick.
The base also has different measurements than the Reunion.
So it appears to me these are 4-wayish sticks--they favor the planes but the diagonals are possible. Perhaps these are good candidates for Tron stick conversions...
I'm interested to see how yours turned out. Let me know when they arrive!
bm