Hey, good thing I, as a professor of fight sticks and arcade hardware, happened to drop by this thread.
Step one: ignore everyone else in this thread.
If you're using a 360 as your only hardware, do this:
Order 2X madcatz SE fightsticks. They're designed to conveniently come apart and they're only like 30 bucks if you're a smart shopper. They have button and stick quick release connections so uou won't even have to do any soldering!
Order some new sticks and buttons for them since the ones they come with are kinda trash. I recommend Sanwa JLF sticks (~25 bux) and Sanwa buttons (~2 bux?) - order them from lizardlick.com or the madcatz store, whichever gets you a better deal. Keep the old buttons and sticks as backups or whatever I guess; I haven't had any Sanwa stuff fail on me ever, though.
TE sticks already come with Sanwa stuff in them, you might consider getting those instead if you get a good deal. Or maybe design your cabinet just to have TE sticks 'dock' in them - I've seen setups like that, it's really cool, actually.
hit me up on aim/msn/facebook and I'll talk your ear off.