How to perk up conductive rubbers in old game controllers ?

Anyone know how to get their old game controllers buttons to be responsive again, it seems common to find old game controllers that have been used and now the buttons have to be either pressed really hard to make contact or the buttons most commonly the d-pad is flat, awkward to press and hardly works.

Is there some type of solution these pads can be soaked in to make them
(increase in size, bouncy and responsive) after 20 some odd years of being used ?

Cheers,
Someguy1

 

If it's just worn down rubber pads: I haven't tried this with controllers, only remotes (for which it's - obviously - impossible to get proper replacement parts), but shaving off the top layer of the old ones with a razor and replacing it with a (thicker) slice taken from a replacement part (rubber button mat) taken for any current gen controller (doesn't matter which, just take what's available) works great.

Some people recommend putting conductive ink on there, but that will not change the "button feel", probably wear out again quite fast, and might even short out the contact area.

 

One way to solve the problem is to dismantle the controllers and give them a good clean removing dust and dirt particles + applying a contact enhancer on the motherboard buttons location. A product that I have had good success with for refurbishing old consoles and controllers is Deoxit (a little bit goes a long way).

 

He's not talking about the contact points, but more of the "housing" of the contact point i.e. the little rubber dome around it

 

Cleaning the whole thing does help. Other than that, buying a new controller is the way to go, there is not much else to do when it comes to usage and normal wear.

 

Was just about to go all sarcastic "sure let's just all buy new Virtual Boy pads, they're plentiful and cheap" on you - but then I noticed they actually are

But others, for example CD-i - not so much. And why pay upwards of $35 for one if you can fix it for $1?

 

There is a rubber repair fluid made by 3M

 

SG what controller is it? if its a turbo pad, just buy new rubber. the TG16/PCE pads rubbers are pretty much the same as Famicom/NES
i changed my D-PAD out on my Turbo pad with NES rubbers, worked well. only thing i cleaned since it didn't match was the run select buttons.

 

best thing to do is to just buy new rubbers on ebay or something, if they're available. I did this recently with my SNES and PS2 controllers. Actually works very well (despite being cheap 3rd party rubbers)

 

Oh, looks like eBay has replacement Sega Saturn pads for sale now.

I'm not a big fan of these aftermarket replacements for the SNES, but they will have to do. They don't feel exactly like the old thing, especially when the pads are flatter at the base compared to rounded on the originals.

 

thanks for the info on SS rubbers dc , didn't know they were out

http://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_...ive.TRS0&_nkw=Sega+Saturn+conductive&_sacat=0