hibachifinal
Member
I personally haven't tested Xtokki's converter, but it worked well with an Inpin and TC3 (Ps2 to DC)So I just got a couple of questions...
These convertors (primarily the Xtokki) aren't known to have lag are they?

Whats a fair price to be paying for a used, though looked after HRAP 1 or 2
This is really tough, they were never released outside japan, more likely you will resort to importing.
HRAP 2's especially have an illogical 'rare collectible' pricing attached to them, if you look at Rakuten/Yahoo!AuctionsJapan "buy it now", the HRAP2's are well over 12,000yen, while HRAP 2SA's are almost 20,000yen. HRAP1 and other variants ("Liscenced" HRAP) fare over 10,000yen. Most of these are "Boxed/Like New" though.
These prices are rape and mostly due to scalpers/hoarders sadly. But hey they are "new" lol.
If you see a used one for auction, its gonna be roughly 5000yen up to 9000yen.
I was lucky enough to win an auction on my first HRAP2 for a little over 7000yen, but then total for proxy & shipping cost me 9000yen. it's silly.
If you're lucky, you can find ebay/forums/etc sellers, A good price would be $140 US including Shipping or less in my opinion. That's how much I got my second HRAP2 (pictured above) for.
How easy are they to swap sticks and buttons on? Compared to say a HRAP VX-SA where all the buttons are quick release and you can just unplug the stick. I'm hoping there is no soldering required basically?
Both joystick and buttons are connective through quick-disconnects, so it's pretty much just swapping em in, easy.
I just love the design of these sticks - I wanna keep it stock in appearance and pop in a LS-32-01 and most likely just leave the sanwa buttons(they are sanwa OBSF-30's aren't they?) for some pure shmup heaven.
the classic HRAP's all have HORI buttons unless noted (SA or SE).
Good luck hunting! I'm currently on the lookout for a HRAP1 (green + black) myself, it's hard haha.
edit- ANYONE tried those custom Madcatz TE side panels yet? specifically the clear smoke ones, im curious how well they look with the black case hehe.