Dremeling out an octo from a square gate would be a disaster. and painting buttons doesn't sound like a good idea either. I know nothing about JLWs, both my sticks have JLFs. JLF = . from what I understand, lots of folks like JLW for shooters and JLF for fighters. The JLF is clicky, but loose and responsive. with out being floppy. you can do a dragon punch motion with very little actual stick movement. The clicking isn't so bad. maybe a little insulation in the box would help to mask it. Being that you don't have alot of preconcieved notions from playing with certain sticks you may find you like the square gate. alot of people do. I love the octagon gate myself and can't play for shit with a square gate. this comes from playing american cabinets with HAPP sticks for so long I guess. you may want to think about HAPP sticks though, the perfect 360 stick is optical so no clicking. I don't know if you can wire it to run off a 360 pcb though. Alot of people will talk down on HAPP but they are just elitests. HAPP is what you would find on any north american street fighter cabinet pre SFIV. If I was gonna build a stick from scratch it would have a HAPP stick and Sanwa Buttons. I would mimic the size of the Madcatz TE. it looks huge but it is very comfy to play. And I would use and American style straight 6 button layout. I plugged the first 2 buttons on my TE for a straight 6 layout. I found that I don't use the 'cheater buttons' when playing with a joystick. that wiring job up there is just lazy. I've seen a lot of really neat and tidy wire jobs, so nice that the makers use lucite bottoms to show off the workmanship.