What pad do I buy?
Dom has made a great video listing and reviewing many different pads.
TL;DR
- L-TEK
- Affordable hard pads, great for all around play. Suffers from weak arrow panels.
- The stock PCB only polls at 125 Hz, which makes timing more difficult. You can mitigate this by doing the Arduino mod to make it poll at 1000 Hz.
- Do the penny mod for additional sensitivity.
- The optional bar is not worth the money, it is wobbly and expensive. See Roujo’s bar building guide on how to build your own for much cheaper.
- StepManiaX
- These are high-end, arcade-grade pads but are extremely difficult to get due to low supply and high demand.
- If you play stamina, you might run into issues with triggering accidental decents/way offs due to the SMX configuration software having little adjustability, paired with the square-shaped arrow panels.
- These pads originally came with load cell sensors, which were unreliable and prone to breakage. Fourth generation and newer SMX pads use FSR sensors, which are much better than the load cells.
- Purchasing an arcade machine/pads is usually the best option if you can find one.
- Search Craigslist, arcade buy/sell Facebook groups, Kijiji, etc.
- Cabs can be converted to Stepmania fairly easily, see JeffreyATW’s Guide here.
- Single pads can be converted to USB with either FSR’s or a STAC Board.
- DDRGame pads are not very good, but make a good base for FSR modding. If you can get one for cheap it might be worth picking it up.
- Precision Dance Pads are extremely unreliable and overpriced. These are not worth buying over any other option.
- Baila-Tech are notorious for not shipping their pads. Buyer beware!
- Other pads like Anton’s travel pads are good options too.
DIY Pads
Lately, there have been tons of advancements in DIY pad building and people have made affordable pads that are easy to build and perform well.
4199’s Epic Velostat Pad (~$20)
This is a pad that 4199 made out of parts he had laying around. It’s probably awful to play on but hella cheap and he managed to pass a 20 on it, somehow.
Plywood FSR Travel Pad (~$100)
Take a piece of plywood, slap some FSR’s on it and call it a day. yutsi is a stamina player who uses one of these and is able to pass 20’s on it.
Other pads I don’t know much about:
- Dom has a ten-part video series on how he built a custom pad with used arcade parts.
- Re:Flex pads are an open source, arcade-grade pad created by Brittany.
- Mystic pads are also an open source, arcade-grade pad made by Ashley aimed to cost around ~$1000.