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If you’re a regular reader of TrustedReviews you may already know about the fate that my PlayStation Portable console suffered recently. While I was busy playing, I mean reviewing OutRun 2006, the analogue stick on my PSP just snapped clean off. Needless to say I wasn’t best pleased, especially considering that I imported my PSP from the Far East and it was out of warranty anyway.

So, with no chance of getting a replacement or a repair from Sony, I decided to see if I could get a replacement part myself. Unfortunately, the majority of websites that I found were happy to repair broken units, but didn’t sell the parts to facilitate a customer repair, and given that most of these “repair services” cost in excess of £40, I wasn’t really willing to go down that route.

Then I discovered www.psptree.co.uk, an online store that seemed to sell pretty much every possible spare part for the PSP, including the analogue stick that I needed. In fact, as I started to wander through the pages of PSP Tree I realised that you could, in essence build an entire console from scratch – assuming that you were happy to pay more for all the parts than a new unit would cost you. With a price of £20 for the analogue stick, I was set to make a serious saving over sending the console away to be repaired. That said, even PSP Tree’s repair service was cheaper than I’d seen elsewhere – the company would have charged me £35 including the new stick for a full repair.

Since I was going to have to crack my PSP open to repair it I figured I may as well have some fun too. I also asked PSP Tree to send me a replacement face plate and buttons, so I could customise the look as well as repair my unit. So, with a blue face plate and buttons at my disposal along with the replacement joystick, I set about ripping my PSP to pieces. One thing that I did notice when I unpacked the bits from PSP Tree is that the faceplate includes a screen protector – so all those PSP owners, including myself, that have been worried about scratching their screens should relax, you can always just buy a new face plate for £14.99.

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