AXBY button noise

Wanted to share this because I’ve seen other posts about folks trying to game in bed and the button noise annoying their partner. I went down a rabbit hole as I’m mainly a bed-gamer and here’s what I’ve found

I purchased the Sakura retro buttons and just for anyone wondering I didn’t notice a difference in sound. I also used keyboard lube around the buttons (and the housings of the buttons themselves with the device disassembled) as I’ve seen in some videos and I feel like that barely helped as well.

The only thing I’ve found to significantly reduce the sound is cutting up small squares of electrical tape and putting them on the underside of the buttons which I saw a fellow redditor once talk about potentially trying. The thing is, it’s not really the sound of the button going down that’s loud, it’s when it comes back up. For those familiar, there is three prong type pieces of plastic that are on the outsides of each button, when it comes back up up those prongs hit the plastic of the device itself which makes the loudest sound in my opinion. However, after adding like 4-5 layers of electrical tape (lol) it is significantly quieter, I believe due to less travel time on the up motion, leading to less of a sound. The only downside is you can get it to a point where you BARELY have to push the button because of the amount of tape, and I could see that potentially being an issue if you put too much tape. Right now I have my A button caked up with tape and I actually kind of like barely having to push the buttons, I may go back and add more to the other buttons.

Quick tips for anyone trying to do this. I followed the Sakura Retro button replacement video on YouTube, I actually didn’t disconnect anything (bad idea? Probably, but I was more worried I would destroy something as I’m not too savvy). After installation I found I had to hold power for 30 seconds, then plug into a charger to get it to turn back on.

I hope this helps anyone coming across this issue!