Now, I've dabbled with beautifying controllers a little bit before (mostly with some help) but damn, if I'm not proud of how these two beauties turned out.
See below...
First controller is decked with a soft purple face plate and plain black back plate (which unfortunately the original I was going to use was stripped by screws and cost me another $6 bucks, but I digress.) My original plan was to do purple face plate and clear buttons with LED back lighting . However, I could not find any clear buttons for a pro controller anywhere on the face of the internet. With the pro controllers vast differences on the inside from a gen one or two remote, it would've been way more work than I was willing to do in a night. It was still a pain though - the back plate I ordered wasn't exactly fit for the pro either and some cuts had to be made for the bar to fit properly.
The thumb sticks are metal and magnetic, I can pop them off and replace them with longer or shorter sticks. This also came back to bite me in the ass too, though. The paint on the face plate was way thick and had to be sanded down so the sticks didn't... stick anymore.
The thumb sticks are complimented by magnetic buttons, and a shiny magnetic d-pad. Honestly, the d-pad is a dream and makes older games that require more d-pad use way more comfortable. I can now navigate Resident Evil 4's menus like a pro. 'Cause god, I'm terrible at everything else with that game, I might as well have something.
Magnetic components (and face plate) come from eXtremerate (https://extremerate.com/). You can buy directly from their site, where everything is cheap as shit, but you have to order a minimum of $100 before you can check out (hah). You can also find a lot of their stuff (for a higher price) on that one website that conveniently offers 2 day shipping. You know. That one site.
exhibit a
Second controller has a simple, came with the controller face and back plate.. but silver costs $5 more when you buy it so it's better, right?
Anyway - controller is decked out with the same magnetic d-pad and buttons. They really are great to play with, and the pack I bought also came with extended buttons. It's an interesting concept, but when you put them on and press down it almost feels like their going to pop off at any given moment. Original size buttons are stable as shit and I'm fine with that.
Biggest difference with this controller would be the thumb sticks. Underestimating my laziness, I had already ordered clear buttons before I realized I didn't want to put in the effort, and then was too lazy to cancel the order. So it goes.
The only thing that really fit the pro controller from the button pack were the analog sticks, and they're a decent material and kind of matched so... in they went. You can't really see them, because they're covered by thumb grips, but I promise they're there.
The thumb sticks and extra useless buttons came from modfreakz, a decent site with no $100 minimum and free shipping. It did take almost a week just for them to ship though. (https://modfreakz.com/). The thumb grips, of course, are from KontrolFreek. I bought these for CJ almost two years ago now I think (and liked them so much I bought a second set for myself) and also long as you're not crazy harsh they do last a while, so they're worth the almost $20 bucks. (https://www.kontrolfreek.com/collections/thumbsticks/products/destiny-cqc-signature-edition)
Unfortunately, the metal thumb sticks on the purple controller make it impossible to use the grips or else I'd probably have the second pair on my controller right now.
exhibit b
It was a pretty fun way to pass the time and the end results make it worth it. I do have a previous gen ps4 controller still in OG black that might end up being my next project... ideas?