TL;DR – The original joysticks can be direct swapped into the Gulikit replacements.
I’m not sure if anyone else has discovered this yet, if so, feel free to just tell me/delete this post, no need for trash talking, etc.
So I got my Gulikit joystick replacements in the other day, but after hanging out in the Hardware Hacking Village at BSides SATX today, I was inspired to go just a little bit further. I had heard the Gulikit thumbpads are on the harder/slicker side, and noticed this as soon as I opened the box. After tearing apart my Switch Lite and pulling the joysticks out, I took it a step further and disassembled both the original joysticks and the Gulikit replacements. To my surprise, I was able to find a combination of parts that retains the thumbpads and even the feel of the joystick as well.
After opening both joysticks, I transferred over the spring, spring retainer/washer, thumbpads with attached joystick stalk, dust cover/boot, and (for lack of a better term) the wonky bit that attaches to the stalk inside the housing. I have all the leftovers in the last picture so you can see what I didn’t use. Sorry for the low effort/quality pictures, I wasn’t really planning on stumbling onto this, I was mostly just documenting so I could put everything back together properly.
Anyone else tried this before?