Hard Plastic Pad Problems

[El Mullet]

I'm not sure if this should go into the other home pad threads (home-made, soft, metal) simply because my problem does not involve those pads. If I made a mistake, I apologize, but I'd like some help.

I own two of those black, hard plastic DDR pads. Click here to see an example of what I am talking about. Anyway, I've been using these pads for a while without any problems. Recently, however, both of them started exhibiting a glitch with the Left arrow. They will register steps about 80% of the time, but the other 20%, it won't register anymore. And they seem find for about one or two songs before starting the problem again. All the other buttons work fine.

I think what went wrong was I was putting too much pressure on the Left arrow (i.e. putting my weight on it while playing). In any case, I want to know how to fix this problem.

I know if I could lift the plastic arrows out of the pad in some way, I could see what is wrong and do something about it. But this thing is I don't know how to do that without damaging the pad. If there's anyone out there that has successfully dealt with this problem, I'd love to hear how you did it.

And I don't want to hear about replacing them. I've been down that road before, and money is tight right now. I just want to see about getting my existing pads working again.

Again, any help is appreciated.
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UCTIONS!

[BTTB]

Yours actually worked???? Lucky.
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