One of my lifelong interests is flying, which mostly happens in simulators like WW2 Online or X-Plane. My flight controls are a Saitek X52 joystick and CH Rudder pedals. The X52 is a fine joystick except for the fact that there is an annoying deadzone, mostly in the pitch axis. This means that the joystick won't register small movements around center which in turn leads to a tendency to overcorrect if you are trying to do small pitch adjustments (like when, ahem, trying to gun someone down...).

Upon inspection of the hardware, I realized that there are three sources of the deadzone. The first is the hall effect sensor itself, which there's not much to do about, but the other two are due to mechanical slop in the linkage between the stick and the sensor. Apparently the Saitek engineers don't know what I thought should be obvious: If you want to avoid hysteresis in a mechanical system, you either need to manufacture it to exacting tolerances or you have to preload it. It's a little late thinking about the first alternative now, but the second is a perfect avenue for some modding.

I decided to use a very light extension spring attached to the magnets to make sure that they are always pulled in one direction, which gets rid of the play when changing directions. It works well and I'm pretty happy with the results. It's not as good as having a perfectly linear response, there is still a region of reduced sensitivity due to the Hall effect sensor, but it's much better. If you have an X52, I highly recommend you try it.

Carrier and Spring

Carrier

Spring Mounted

Final Install