Gamepads & Universal Adpaters

This is gonna be a longy more of a journal if you will, so bear with me, also please understand english is not my first language so I apologize in advance for my grammer, but nonetheless I'll do my best to make sense.

Well, I've been doing my own sticks for a while, and all my sticks have a universal 25 pin for console adapters I make out of hacking pads.

I've allways used the official Neo hardware until now that I replaced my AES setup with a MVS setup, it's better for me this way since I'm into making my own stuff, plus I can afford more games this route.

Gamepads were never my thing, and I never performed as good as with a stick on arcade games, but once in a while, I wanted to sit back, relax and just play, so the gamepads started to become more and more important to me.

I went into a wireless fever frenzy, I wanted all my current consoles to have wireless gamepads, and I have to say logitech surpases any pad I ever used, it's a shame they don't have a 6 button layout pad. Actually they did on the past, but those pads suck big time.

Official Saturn pads are still my favorites, they are smooth as silk, and provide excellent response specially for 360's grappling characters which is what I like best, I wanted something like that for my new project, but I didn't dare destroy my Saturn pads I love them too much.

I ran into this Street Fighter AC pads made by Nuby, and at first it was the thing I lovedto hate, but as I used them more and more I realized they're not that bad.

With a handfull of ideas I decided to do the NEO hack on one of this pads. Along with a friend we did the first hack, and it was awfull, until some one said to remove the silicon chip encoder, then it worked great.

Now the next step was up, I wanted this pads to look nothing like a CAPCOM product, so I printed a small NEO logo and placed it over the lenticular art, and it looked better, then I used acetone, and removed the button graphics, that worked out ok, the buttons are not as shinny as before, but they still looked good.

So far this is where I am, I did use the other 2 unused entries on the DB15 to the last 2 buttons, so I can use this pad with my other adpaters I already made for the sticks, so I made a small DB15 to DB25 converter, and it works great, now I can use this pad with all my adapters for different consoles.

I still wanted to get rid off the logos on the pad, so I try acetone on the back logo to no avail, so I used primer for PVC, it has the same properties as thinner, and woops! it messed the plastic big time, so I sanded the back to make it smooth again and used spray primer to paint it later.

I'm eager to post some pictures, but my buddy's cammera is out of juice, and I can't wait so I'm posting this, but I promise pictures will be coming soon.

I know I posted before that I wanted to make a gamepad from scratch kind off like emulating the Neo Pad with microswitches, and I'm still working on that design, but is harder than I thought.

I have I few questions if someone would be kind enough to help out.

What's the best paint to use for plastics like this?

What's the best way to strip the logos out of the buttons, and the pad itself?

What about layouts, I know that is all about preference, but 4 in a row, or 2 on 2?

I use the shoulder buttons L for D, and R for C, for all those BC combinations, and the KOF 99 3 buttons crazy mode activations, could there be a better way?

I try to map 2 buttons to 1 button, but the original buttons have the combinations as well, I guess the continuity is an issue here, is there a way to rectify this?

Any ideas as to how to make your own pad?

Thanks for reading all this, I know it's a pain, but what the hell! it's all about the NEO.