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The SouthPaw Layout is the same as the default layout but the left and right sticks are swapped, if you are playing halo normally the right stick is aim and left stick is move. With this mod the right stick is move and the left stick is aim. This means never having to setup your controller for a new game, and for those games that do not allow you to setup your inputs this will always work the way it is "supposed" to. This mod was a bit easier than the s-type mod in that fewer wires required re-building, but this is a very difficult mod that should only be attempted by fearless soldering gods. My first attempt resulted in a broken thumbstick click (pressing down on top the thumbstick so it clicks) so be warned even if you know what you are doing this may end up being the end of a perfectly good working controller. Tools Supplies Begin by disassembling the controller Once we have the circuit board out of the case we will
remove both triggers by de-soldering the contacts and then prying off the
plastic mount. With the triggers out of the way we can see the points we will be working with. We need to cut 8 traces to isolate the center pin of each of four variable resistors that control the X,Y movement of the left and right thumbstick, and the output of each of the thumbstick clicks. Notice in this photo the red lines, these represent the places to cut the trace on the circuit board.
Cutting traces is a difficult proposition. A heavy blade is needed, you are cutting through copper which is a soft metal but its still metal so you have to use quite a bit of pressure and repetitive slices to work through it. Once each trace has been cut, check for continuity with a multi meter to confirm the trace has really been cut. Video clip cutting and testing Now that all the traces have been cut its time to do some wiring. I used three colors of wire to make it a bit easier to see what is going on. We disrupt the output from the middle pin of each of the variable resistors Starting on the left of the circuit board it is pretty straight forward, we cut one trace for each of the three points and have an easy spot to solder to on either side of our cut.
On the right side of the PCB it is a different story, we have outputs in the middle of traces! For two of our points we have to cut the trace on either side of it. This also means when we are soldering the incoming signal we will need to run an extra bit of wire to jump from one point to the other. The most difficult bit of cutting and soldering is the part for the yellow wire in the below photo, on one side there is no convenient via to solder to so I chose to solder to the trace itself. It is widest close to the pin so try to cut it close, scrape the solder mask from the board and tack a wire right to the trace. Its a difficult maneuver.
With the new wires in place we re attach the triggers and reassemble. Using the windows software that came with the controller we can see all buttons and functions of the controller are still working but the sticks have been reversed. Wiring for Inverted - (The photos below are of an original S-Type not a 360 controller but the concept is the same) You can also wire any other controller preference so you can always jump in on any new game or other box and rock and roll just using default. One of the guys here at llamma insists on playing with look inversion so we did one up an S-Type for him. This mod is much simpler than the above and only requires 5 traces to cut and one wire (more when done on a 360 controller), all the solders are "easy" the worst one is soldering to a via the other two points are already tinned pads, no wire to trace solders as in the southpaw. The whole concept of this mod is a little different in that we need to reverse the flow of electricity through the variable resistor that picks up the input from the thumbstick. This will make up register as down and vice versa. Pin 1 was originally input voltage, we need to make it
ground The photos below are of an original S-Type not a 360 controller but the concept is the same on both styles.
Five traces need to be cut, three connecting pin #3 to ground and two that bring in and send out the supply voltage on pin1. We then scrape a small bit of the ground plane clean so we can solder the first pin to it (notice how pin 1 has a bit of a pointy hat thing going on). Pin 3 is then provided the supply voltage, we can pick it up at the upper right pin from the L/R side of the thumbstick. The supply voltage then needs to be reconnected past where it was going on Pin 1 so it can continue on its way to other circuits.
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