Dear Saitek.

I write to congratulate you on the performance of your X52 pro HOTAS system. It worked faithfully for me and gave me absolutely no problems right up to the pico-second at which the warranty ran out. Firstly, one of the buttons on the throttle started to only work when the the throttle was below 50%. Then, it stopped working at all. Still, I thought. No worries. There are plenty more to use.

What I'd failed to take into consideration, however, was the herd mentality which you had somehow managed to instill into all facets of the controller. The button next to it soon followed suit and by then, the writing was on the wall.

Not being the type of person who simply throws something away without trying to fix it first (I'm a bit old school when it comes to binning something I can still remember paying over £200 for), I thought I'd have a go at taking the errant controller apart to possibly effect repairs. I enjoy a game as much as anyone and loved the game of "find the screws under the stickers" which you'd clearly gone to great lengths to prepare. Speaking of lengths, I must give you credit for your recycling ethos. Something shown by the fact that the screws used to hold the thing together were of all different sizes - waste not want not, indeed.

I easily identified the cause of the problems, as I saw straight away that some of the wires (which were thinner than a gnat's ) had broken or had become detatched from the actual buttons. These buttons are of course completely inaccessible to the likes of me. I contacted my local hospital in case they were able to do the microsurgery required, but was told that their consultant nuerosurgeon was busy playing EVE online and was, therefore, unavailable.

All in all, my gaming experience has been made more realistic when using your hardware, especially my attempt to recreate the Apollo 13 mission.

If I may be so bold, however, as to make one tiny suggestion. How about making the ing thing work for longer than ten bloody minutes?

I thank you in anticipation of absolutely sod all.
 
My X52 lasted years, one day the microscopic wires at the base of the joystick snapped.
My replacement X55 on the other hand has absolute crap hardware where the hat button became "mush" after 2 weeks.
The alternatives are few. Asking prices for something that might be better are crazy.
I'll do without.
 
ive had my x box one controller over 20 years but just last week the left shoulder button went the way of the dodo
so looks like I am gonna have to fork out a least £16 for a new one finally...……….
the bonus to this story is I found the old one in a skip with nowt wrong other than a bit of insulation missing cured with tape
 
To be fair, Saitek got eaten by Logitech six years ago so falling on deaf ears a bit there. The X52 though is considered "low end" in the world of HOTAS stuff. They're definitely made to be "disposable" rather than something that'll last forever. Mine hung around for about five years (was a Saitek one as well!) until the throttle started acting a bit oddly, and I ended up going down a horribly expensive rabbit hole last summer...
 
I bought an X52 in 2015. It lasted 1000 hrs unil the yaw spring broke (not counting the throttle detent that broke after about an hour). It was still under guarantee, so I got a free X52 Pro as a replacement. After another 1000 hrs, the yaw spring broke again, so I took both apart and made my own springs to fix them. I've probably had another 4000 hrs out of them until this week, when, like OP's, both have broken wires that stopped all the buttons on the throttle from working. The problem got worse and worse in the last moonth until I couldn't use them. I'll probably rewire them sometime. Overall, I think that they were very good value at £100 for about 6000 hrs use. I'm now back on my Virpils, which are sort of better, but they're just not as convenient as X52 regarding the button layout and the weight. I like to have my sticks on a small board on my lap in the armchair when I play. The weight of the board digs into my knees when I use the Virpils. Incidentally, the Virpil Alpha has the same yaw spring as the X52, and it too broke at about 1000 hrs, but, unlike Saitek, Virpil gave me replacements to fix it.
 
It worked faithfully for me and gave me absolutely no problems right up to the pico-second at which the warranty ran out.
Just wondering if you reached out to Logitech, the new owners - you never know, they might surprise you.
I bought my X56* thru Amazon with a hefty 3 year warranty (honoured by Amazon - I checked), replaced once (dodgy button) and still going strong (4 years ish - touch wood).

* and they do (did?) have a bad rep for breaking
 
DITTO I still have mine and its almost fully functional hat switch wont go right is all great stick
but prefer the x box pad due to playing elite from my leather reclining sofa chair with suspended monitor
rather than a desk setup
 
In the meantime, Saitek has been bought by Logitech, so now everything comes from Logitech, which did'nt make things better.

Unfortunatally, I had the same experience with my X52, where I had a lot of ghost inputs and than, one month after warrenty ran out, the rudder of the jostick failed and never came back to functionality :/

I bought the X56 (from Logitech, the "blue" version) and ghosting plus electrostatic discharge happens unusually often when touching the metal toggles...
All in all, at the moment, there is no real alternative at this price segment :/
 
However, I have heard that this was not always the case: Some very old X52s are said to still run today.
The problem is that people rarely give the context. Even the cheapest ones will last for a century if you leave them in a cupboard. It's hours of use that count, not the time of ownership.

You're right about the wires. It's just a matter of time before one or more suffer from metal fatigue, as they are bent and straightened when you use the throttle. Both of my X52s had broken wires after about 2500 hrs use. I just fixed one. The first sign is when something doesn't work at full throttle, but does when you back it off.
 
Warthogs are still the best bang for the buck...

Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog Flight Stick and Throttle
No yaw function on the flight stick though, which is a big disadvantage. I think X52 is still the best bang for buck. They're very popular, which is why we hear about their failures. all the failures are fixable if you're handy with tools. I made my own yaw springs that are better than originals and I've now soldered the broken wires, so both sets are up and running again after about 3000 hrs each. I only paid for one set. the other was a free replacement, so I've had 6000 hrs for £100, and they're still going. I accept that most people wouldn't be able to do that, but not many people play for more than 1000 hrs too.

To make the yaw spring, just buy one approximately the same from Ebay and bend and cut the ends to the right shape. Fixing the wires is easier than it looks. I bi-passed the slot that they ran through - just pulled them out from the top and bottom of the slot, slipped a bit of heatshrink over, soldered the ends and shrank the tube. It took about 30 mins to solder about 12 broken wires. It might not last long, but if more break or the repaired ones break, I'll just solder them again.
 
My x52 has lasted years. Bought it before 2012. Its still going. Obviously mileage varies.

EDIT: context. Used the contollers for elite dangerous and the X series of games that have been out all along. In fact, it was because of one of the X games that I bought the stick and throttle to replace my old yf22 thrustmaster. X space games were the closest to elite one had for a while.
 
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