When I bought my Gauntlet II, the guy had swapped all of the logo sticks with some cheap new generic ones. He said the old sticks were all sloppy and no good, but he'd throw them in if I wanted.  I tore them down, and two of them were pretty good (the outside sticks, I'm sure). The other two however, were terrible. They wouldn't center at all, and were terribly sloppy.

I dis-assembled, cleaned everything up, and replaced the centering plastics with new parts. Re-assembled with a little white lithium on the moving parts, and WOW! These things feel great! Crispy, almost. Here's a photo of the old plastics vs. new. I stuck a couple of arrows in there to show the wear spots.