Xbox Series X Thumbsticks

Glad the Z-Sticks relaunched! best feeling sticks for my play style - which is the smooth PS3 style dome sticks and no real discernible ridges. Yet these sticks have a reverse domed center great for holding on to stick more precisely for delicate character movement - like Crash 1 High road. Best stick design I've seen yet.

These thumbsticks were exactly what I was looking for, normal everyday Xbox One stock thumbsticks in various colors; I purchased black, red, and blue. They're perfect for what they are, but in my specific case they didn't quite work the way I hoped. I planned on using them for my two PS5 Dualsense controllers, but when assembling them back together, the sticks were pressed up against the front face plate of the controller around the friction ring, causing the sticks to get stuck and have no freedom of movement.

What I found was the curvature of the base dome portion of the Xbox sticks was a little shorter and flatter than that of the PS5 Dualsense sticks, and the contour of the Dualsense did not accommodate the space needed for these particular sticks. I did manage to get these in a workable condition by using four methods:

1) shaving the analog module stem down a few millimeters with an emery board to gain a bit of vertical distance away from the front face plate,

2) using a pair of pliers to GENTLY grip the bottom edges of the dome and pry them slightly inward,

3) not fully tightening the screw that secures the plastic "shelf" which holds the battery inside the controller and the PCB to the controller housing, and

4) NOT securely clipping the bottom two clips near the 3.5mm headset port.

All of these add incrementally more play for the sticks to move more freely without feeling as much friction from the face plate. There are still precise points where I can feel it…