Weak hands! Help! I need a lighter spring for...

[HeadphoneDisaster]

Hello. I know this is my first post. I read the disabled area and couldn't find the question or answer I now must ask. lol I have Duchenne's Muscular Dystrophy and I've been going to the arcade to play Street Fighter IV quite a bit. Other 2D Fighters as well... Good thing about an arcade is that the sticks get played with A LOT so they're... "broken in" so the springs seem a tad lighter. At the arcade, it's alright. SO! With the release of SFIV on the consoles, I had someone build me a custom arcade stick for my Xbox 360 and my PS3 (it's compatible with both). The stick he used to build it is a SUZO/HAPP (black plastic parts version) Competition Joystick. The spring is the silver light spring.

The problem is that even though the spring he used was the lightest that particular stick offers (to our knowledge. he tried to help me with this but got stumped.), it's still too heavy for my very weak hands and the movement is very uncomfortable. I tried many positions, hights, angles, lap, table... Nothing seems to give me any leverage advantage. So me and the guy that built this for me split up to try and find a lighter spring that fits. We tried a racing R/C car spring that was close to the same size but it didn't work because it got caught up to far on the inside of the shaft and the stick didn't move at all. lol So now it sits with the original spring in it.

Can someone. Anybody! Please, please help me find a spring for the Competition Joystick that's maybe a quarter or half lighter than the silver spring they use? It would help me so much if I could even get some type of other solution. I've looked into custom spring companies but I'd like to see what options I have before I go and do something like that. You can contact me anytime, pretty much. I'll be checking this post and my PM often. I'm also psyched about discovering this site so I'd like to introduce myself. You can call me Andy. I'm an easy going guy and have a very open mind. I hope to learn more about cabinets and arcade components here as I've already read some really cool articles on here. Well. Hopefully you guys can aid me in this quest to solve my problem. Have a great day!

[Ginsu Victim]

Take the spring to Ace Hardware and ask them to show you the same size in a lighter gauge.

[HeadphoneDisaster]

That's, cool! Me and my wife were just about to go there. Haha! Thank you. I'll let you all know if I found one. I'm sure I will. They have a lot of stuff there. Home Depot may even have if they don't. Or Radio Shack even. Thank you!