Does anyone sell OEM Nintendo 64 thumbsticks?

In case you didn't know, Nintendo still does repairs on the N64's controller. However, they charge like $70 just to replace the stick, which is a pretty easy fix really. So I was thinking, OEM sticks must still exist since Nintendo still uses them, so might that also mean that someone else has gotten their hands on them and are selling them? Does anyone know? I figured if anyone knew where to get OEM sticks from, it'd be someone from Assembler!

 

They're all over eBay / the net. They mostly suck, though. Someone did a GameCube-style one - I've heard they can be OK. Obviously not the same as Nintendo's, though!

 

I wonder if it's possible to reuse the majority of the original stick? I mean, surely it's not the entire thumb stick assembly that's the cause of th problem. If you swapped out just the component that wears out, it should feel like the OEM stick.

 

Pain in the arse, though. And you still need a replacement.

It's on my list of things I need to manufacture, but fairly low down.

 

Cannibalizing one non-oem to repair the other...that may be possible: Here's a couple links on repairing a loose thumbstick. Good details on disassembly.

mmmonkey Nintendo 64 controller repair

Youtube: Easy N64 Analog Stick Fix

 

So is it the stick itself that wears down? Sounds like you could simply steal the stick from an OEM-style replacement and pop that into the original assembly.

 

No, it's not the stick at all.

 

It's not? Where does the dust come from? Are there Columbian drug cartels living inside?

 

The bottom of the stick wears down (chuck out the "nub" and the rectangle piece that locks into the bottom swivel) as well as the cup it sits in (is no longer round but oval).

 

I've never tried this but it seems like it could work:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEJmSQjONRg

 

The bowl wears out too (the bottom half of the shell)
if you want a perfect replacement maybe swap out just the optics from the old stick to the new one.
The way the n64 stick works is a lot like an old ball mouse, it uses a slotted disc and IR beams to measure X/Y IIRC

 

I see it like this:

The first thing that happens is that over time the white bowl wears down because there is no lubrication between the stick and the bowl.
After a certain amount of the bowl has turned into dust, the stick itself sacks down a little.

Now two things happen, on the one side the black gear pieces wear down because since the stick gets more bulky the further you go in the direction of where your thumb is and since it sacked down from it's initial position now the narrow slots of those black gear pieces are getting destroyed by the big fat part of the thumbsticks shaft.
And the second thing is that now that the stick moved further down it grinds even more against the white bowl and the stick itself wears down.

You can buy new gear parts here which is great: http://store.kitsch-bent.com/product/n64-joystick-gears
But it is also useless unless you also replace the white bowl or prevent the thumbstick from sacking down in another way.

I have taken appart countless of thumbsticks and it's not too hard to find the actual thumbstick part itself in good shape, but the white bowl is always scratched.
Somebody even made a 3D model of the bowl here already: https://grabcad.com/library/n64-joystick-housing

I still don't understand what's so hard about making 1:1 replacement parts or why Nintendo doesn't sell new sticks anymore, they surely know there is a need since I write them every year xD

 

The reason they won't sell just the sticks is it's not a user serviceable part, never was and never will be..

 

Hmmm, if the cause of the floppyniess is the bowel wearing down and causing the stick to not sit firmly against the spring, wouldn't the simple fix be to stretch the spring like in the mmmonkey guide? Sounds eaiser than trying to patch up the bowel.

 

Lol bowel

but no not really
1: the spring is pretty soft metal
2: the stick still needs some close contact to stay stiff, because the bowel becomes miss shaped it makes the stick sit unevenly. Also the two gears get out of wack..

 

Nintendo had had no problems selling new replacement thumbsticks some years ago, so yes they were a user serviceable part once. They just run out and didn't bother making new ones.
They came in little bags complete with instructions etc.

 

Huh, I asked Nintendo Australia if they would just send me the stick and they said no. I also asked Nintendo Japan, but they don't have the parts anymore.

 

Try calling a few times, you may get different answers.

 

They certainly do give different answers. When I sent my first controller away about 14 years ago, they fixed the issue for free. This time, they charged me $70 :\

 

I bought a gamecube-style 3rd party stick, and then added a "N64 Stick Converter PCB" from nfggames (http://nfggames.com/forum2/index.php?topic=5023.0) which fixes the gamecube one's shortcomings.

It turns out to be a very nice stick replacement! Possibly even better than the original.