Cheap, effective soft pad mod for carpe

[Neeperando]

OK, so this is one soft pad mod that I have not yet heard of anyone doing. It's worked pretty well for me, so I thought I'd share it. It came from my fear of using plywood, because although plywood prevents scrunching, I've still had it slip.

The gist is that I bought a plastic chairmat from OfficeMax that has cleats on the bottom (these range from $17-50, a cheap one worked fine for me) and taped my pad to it.

It was a little more complicated. Originally, I cut the bottom layer off my MadCatz Beat Pad and used carpet tape to directly attach the layer with the contacts to the chairmat. I DO NOT recommend this for two reasons: a) I don't know if all pads have a design where the bottom can be torn off and leave the electronics intact and b) if things go wrong you're totally screwed (As I learned from experience).

My advice is to just duct tape the pad directly to the chairmat by its edges.

PROS: This pad will never, ever slip. Not ever, not one centimeter. The cleats on the chairmat prevent any movement at all. Also, the chairmats are harder than carpet, so sensitivity is a little better.

CONS: This pad is impossible to store. Chairmats are not solid plastic, they bend, but slowly, so if you prop it against a wall it will gradually crumple, and the next time you play you will have to weight it down with heavy books or something for about an hour before you can play. This (presumably) is also bad for the pad. I had no solution until I moved into a new place where my DDR setup was in the same room as my queen-sized bed, so I could store it underneath and it stayed flat all the time. Then the problem is getting it in and out of there, which is not easy because you can't drag a chairmat on carpet. For this I made a little carpet out of cut-up paper bags and drag out from under the bed on that, then set it on the carpet (there might be more elegant ways of doing this, but I'm a cheapass).

Also, this is probably not a very good solution if you're not going to be playing on carpet.

[VxJasonxV]

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