Can I remove the pots from a hacked XBOX S-Controller? Short answer, yes...

[crashwg]

So I'm hacking away at an S-Controller...  I remove the pot for the R-Trigger and when I test the thing with a controller testing program it's all jacked up when I try to straight jumper from one of the pins to another and strangely enough when I pull the L-Trigger, both triggers are activated simultaneously.

I also would like to remove the two sticks from the front of the controller but wonder if a similar thing will happen.

I do not want to use the analog sticks by the way.  I do however want to use the L and R triggers as digital buttons.  It appears as though I can ground the middle contact on the pots for that but have yet to test if that would work if the pots were removed.  

Do I need to stick a resistor or two in there to emulate the analog functions being in their rest positions?

[crashwg]

So I've done it again.  Asked a question then not waited for a response and figured stuff out on my own.  I decided that for the time being I would knock the pots over, glue them to keep them from rotating and if I got an answer that I could remove them that I would do so at a later time.  Unfortunately, somewhere in the process of knocking them over I screwed something up.  I was getting some crazy results so I decided it would be a good time to do some testing.

I removed a pot and checked the resistance from the center terminal to the side ones carefully adjusting the pot to get it centered.  I came up with a resistance of 5.5k-Ohm.  Closest thing I've got to that is 4.7k but I decided to give it a try anyway.  I did a quick test with uncut resistors dangling off the board and the results looked promising.  The controller test program showed the two axis of the thumbstick I was working on as dead center on one and at 250 or something out of 32,000 in one direction which is pretty much dead center seeing as though the dead zone on an XBOX controller (according to the test program) is 8,000 or something ridiculous like that.

Attached is a picture of how I put it together before I put the heat shrink over the resistor pairs.  Unfortunately I ran out of 4.7ks so I'll have to finish another day.

[crashwg]

I'm still wondering about the triggers BTW.  If nobody knows I guess I'll have to give that a try too...

[danny_galaga]

You could always use trim pots to get the exact resistance...

[Beley]

...  Unfortunately I ran out of 4.7ks so I'll have to finish another day.

Use any resistors you want, the xbox controller uses the pots as a voltage divider. As long as the 2 resistors are the same, the controller will read dead center for that axis (true for triggers as well).

[northerngames]

you need a 10K on each trigger and 2 on each thumbstick assembly.