After hearing this yoke talked up for ages, with some saying it even tops higher end options like the Yoko, after literal months of waiting I was super excited to pick mine up from USP when it came in Yesterday. Unfortunately this lasted exactly exactly until I had I had it set up on my desk and tested the feel of it for the first time. The roll axis is very stiff right at center, to the point that when rotating it a ways and releasing it it “sticks” so to speak, and doesn’t return to full center without being manually set there. But the worst bit by far is the pitch axis. It makes a loud rasping noise, like a bearing has gone bad but not quite, almost a ratcheting type sound, which is accompanied by an unpleasant vibration/roughness through the yoke itself that I can feel in my hands. I will say the build quality appears top notch, very solidly made, with the exception that the hat switch is a little less precise than other yokes / sticks I’ve owned. But it’s those axes that really bother me, originally I had a Honeycomb Alpha which I sold to help pay for the fulcrum, and frankly it felt a lot better. I also used a Boeing TCA yoke for a very short time which in spite of questionable build quality was easily the best feeling yoke I’ve tried yet.
Given the almost universally positive reviews out there for Fulcrum I’m assuming my experience is not normal and there is something wrong with the unit I received. I reached out to Chris at Fulcrum and received a response to the effect that he was sorry I was having issues and would get back to me sometime today (6/10), however here I am at 10pm local time (3am in Britain) and nothing. Given how long it took me to receive my order in the first place I’m not looking forward to finding out how long it will be for a replacement I’m starting to wonder if my best option at this point might be to go with TM and hope their product is more durable than it felt, or bite the bullet and step all the way up to a Yoko.
Has anyone else run into anything like this with Fulcrum, and if so how long did it take to get it sorted?
I don’t have the yoke, but you can find a video there:
That example sounds more silent than the Honeycomb in pitch. It does seem like that unit might have some slight trouble centering exactly as well. Possibly due to weak spring forces towards the center? Might be fixed with lighter (and non-damping) lubrication more conductive to ease of movement. Or heavier spring (I actually get some improper centering with my VKB controllers as well, but only when I switch to light springs and remove center detent from the cam). The loud pitch noise and the associated poor feel might be lubrication issue too, in that case perhaps too little resulting in metal to metal contact.
(Also what’s the build quality issue with TM yoke? From what I gathered this is basically the polar opposite of the Warthog joystick, plastic on the outside and metal on the inside where it matters.)
The actual axes on the TM feel solid, but the buttons and switches feel very cheap, like not even Xbox controller quality, and I’d be concerned about them holding up over daily use for years. They are very well placed and useful however, the mini stick is an especially nice touch. Initially I bought the yoke pack but had to return it because one of the push buttons on the throttle quadrant rather stopped responding almost immediately, but all of the buttons on the yoke feel of similar quality.
Fulcrum suggest getting a dry silicon lube spray and spraying the shaft if it gets stiff. It is meant to come from the factory already coated that way.
Really? From what I can see on Fulcrum’s Facebook page the shaft on these just ends in a kind of control box which is what actually moves back and forth to control pitch. When I pull mine outward to full extension and shine a light on it it’s pretty clear the shaft itself doesn’t slide along anything directly, there is a wide margin of space between the shaft and the sides of the opening in the housing. It appears “free floating” so to speak, only attached at the back, so I can’t imagine what spraying the shaft itself would do. It feels like whatever the internal part rolls along is where the grinding is coming from.
Seems like it. I don’t know if we can link to off site forums here, but a quick search found a pinned thread on Avsim on shaft lubrication. Might be even more effective if you open it up and put some directly where it counts most, but that may or may not void warranty (it doesn’t with Virpil and VKB, but might do so here).
Sounds like Thrustmaster is being too much like Thrustmaster again. My bet is that they are all cheap membrane buttons like they have on the supposedly premium Warthog HOTAS. Paying 5€ more per unit for Omron or Alps switches would probably kill their profit margins or something.
It should be OK as it is the official support forum for Fulcrum I will post it and if it turns out to be against the rules I am sure someone will delete it. The spray I use is “WD40 Specialist Dry PTFE” .
From what I could tell that’s the case, I think if they improved that aspect they’d have the clear winner in the yoke market right now, at lest for those of us that fly mainly airliners. The pendular movement for the pitch really is cool and feels great.
An update on the Fulcrum, just heard back from Chris and unfortunately there is going to be a bit of a wait for new parts to come in (specifically new bearings lol) before a replacement can be sent out, but fortunately it doesn’t sound like it’s going to be anywhere near as long as my initial wait time. I’ll post again here what my experience is when the replacement arrives.
There is certainly nothing wrong with the design of the Fulcrum. I can only suggest your one has been somehow damaged in transit. It has been known unfortunately in a small number of cases. Mine shipped half way around the world to get to me and it was fine. One thing about the Fulcrum customer service is you will get sorted and kept in the loop. Stick with it. It’s worth the wait when working correctly. I love mine.
Figured I’d post a quick update to this, as Chris was finally able to send me out a replacement and overall it’s a huge improvement. The pitch axis is excellent, and while the roll axis is still a little stiff toward center it’s nowhere near as bad. A small negative I observed was that the new one doesn’t travel the full range of motion in one roll direction, meaning that when rotated fully to the physical stop the input reads a few percent short of full. This happens only one one side and no matter how I calibrate it, but since that extremity doesn’t matter all that much in the sim I’m not too worried about it, on the whole I think I’ll be pretty happy with it.
Also something interesting I noticed, following up on some folks recommendations that the front bushing needed to be lubricated, I found a picture in this thread on Avsim talking about the process. I can say that my yoke absolutely does not have the front bushing pictured, but rather a thin metal cover that does not make contact with the yoke shaft at all, and it’s clear the shaft doesn’t make contact with anything until it joins the mechanism in the back. It would seem the design of these has changed since this picture was taken.
Just thought I’d update this as unfortunately the replacement wasn’t the end of the story. About 5 months after I got the replacement the aileron axis started to drift really badly, I was having to recalibrate center before every flight and sometimes it would shift during a flight even. I got in touch with Chris again and he advised me to open it up and check the little plastic piece on the very back of the shaft that held the magnet the sensor used, and sure enough it was loose. I was told it would be a very long time to replace it again and in the meantime to just try to glue the piece back in, which worked for a couple more weeks. Chris said he considered the fact that piece was only held in with glue to be a design flaw and he intended to update future models so it can’t come loose.
Fast forward another few months and I finally got a chance to swap it out again, but when the new one arrived I was really disappointed to find it had exactly the same issue as the first one I received, rough grinding / clicky pitch axis. Chris speculated there may be an issue with the bearing system he used and once again offered to make it right, but after going through three of these I just didn’t feel like dealing with it any more, and fortunately he was willing to take it back for a refund. I’m now using a TCA Boeing yoke, which in spite of the plastic construction I have to admit fits my flying style better anyway. I really wanted to love the fulcrum, it just had such a nice look and solid feel to it, and while the second one still worked it was great. Maybe in a couple years once Chris gets all the issues ironed out I’ll revisit buying Fulcrum products again.
Not as far as I know. They shutdown, and were trying to fulfil any existing orders at least a year ago now.
I have a Fulcrum and have not had any serious issues with it I could not fix myself. They do need the occasional spray of silicon dry lube on the yoke shaft to keep them behaving well or they can bind and get grindy.
It was a good product, I gather the main issue they had was an inability in England to get a reliable source for all the different parts they needed in any sort of quantity - meaning they struggled to get any sort of scaled up production going.
I’m starting to wonder if my best option at this point might be to go with TM and hope their product is more durable than it felt, or bite the bullet and step all the way up to a Yoko.
