Is eBay a good place to buy a new pad?

[Dark Fish]

I recently screwed up my Max2 CD and I was looking around and I saw on eBay they have a 2 pads and Max2 bundle for $60 with shipping, and I was wondering is it a good deal or are they crappy pads?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=21188&item=8180220890&rd=1 is the link but I think the auction closed.

[josh loves macho gang]

the pads are the paper thin 3rd party ones.....trash. if it were a MAX bundle id say get it b/c max is ridiculously hard to find now

[wathomas777]

I would never buy the "thin" soft pads from e-bay. Gamestop has some decent soft pads for $20.00 each, so if you just HAVE to have some paper thin soft pads, go to a store and pick em up.

However, if you are looking for ignition style pads, that can be a different story.

Original Red Octane Ignitions cost about $110.00 per pad in the stores. I got a pair of ignition "knock offs" for my x-box from e-bay for about $50 bucks (including shipping and handling). While the foam in these knockoffs are sub-standard, I have found that the general workmanship of the pad itself is pretty good.

I have since ordered and installed "official" red octane foam inserts that are much harder yielding much better accuracy for the pad. At $9.99 per pad, and $4.50 shipping (super saver), it is a steal, and can even be used to "mod" the paper thin pads by duct taping them to the assembled foam.

Total cost for two pads, including shipping and handling and the original "RO" foam is about $77 dollars which is still 30 dollars less than a single RO ignition.

This type of savings makes taking the risk a little more palatable. Where as ordering thin "non-ignition" pads makes little or no sense, as the shipping and handling alone will eat up whatever you save on the pad, and you run the risk of the pad being complete crap.

Ordering "ignition" knockoffs on e-bay is also a risky concept, but the possibility of getting two nice pads for less than the cost of a single RO ignition pad makes the risk a little more worth taking.

I have heard good reviews for vortz pads (www.vortz.com), and I have been satisfied with the ignition knockoffs I got from ebay from innex.inc. (innex.inc is an e-bay store with pretty great feedback, and I have to say that the quality of my pad for it's cost was top notch, (except for the foam, which, like I said earlier, I replaced with Red Octane foam))

[Dark Fish]

Wow thanks, my pad just started going out (crappy mad catz beat pad) 5 minutes ago so it's time to upgrade. I was planning on an ignition ripoff like you said with the foam inserts so thanks for mentioning I can get the inserts from RO (I forgot you could). By the way how long did it take for the pad/inserts to arrive?

EDIT: also you said Xbox, do they make the PS2 versions as cheap?

[wathomas777]

Yes, innex and voltz both sell ps2 style pads. Innex being the e-bay store and voltz at www.voltz.com.

Of course the red octane foam is available directly from RO
http://www.redoctane.com/ignition-insert.html

Shipping took about a week for each.

When you see the myriad of pads available, realize that you are buying "real" foam from red octane, so don't spend the premium on e-bay to get the newer foam.

Anyway, ebayers typically like to use confusing numbers and descriptions (such as version 3.0 or version 6.0, or dense or hard dense) to describe their foam inserts.

Because there is no standard, it's near impossible to tell what you are really getting foam wise, so ignore the foam type as you probably won't be using it much

Just make sure that the description mentions the raised arrows, "arcade" sized circuitry, and non slip bottom.

Get the best deal you can find. You should find a couple of pads for $10 to $15 a piece. It is a bit of a risk, but I have found Innex inc, a good ebayer, and the pads I got from them were pretty well constructed.

Realize that shipping for the pads is gonna cost an arm and a leg, ($28 to $35 depending on the ebayer)

Red Octanes shipping is much more reasonable, as you can get super saver shipping for $4.50. (Might as well get two inserts as the shipping is the same for two as it is for one)

Order both at the same time and you should get them around the same time. You can keep the cheap foam that comes in the pad as spares, or use them to beef up some soft pads you may have around.

In any case, you can "build" a pair of pretty nice pads using the RO foam and some ignition knockoffs.

[Dark Fish]

I found an auction from Innex Inc that was 2 of those pads for 10 bucks with 30 shipping, as soon as I scrap up that money I'll go for it thanks for the help

[evan8642]

I bought a referbished Redoctane Ignition pad on ebay for about $60 in June and it stills works great.