I am curious if anyone ever heard of SP pad(s) going bad.

Uhm, nope, never.

Never and I've beat the shit out of my 303 pads for about 3 years, everyday.
If anything they wear in like a baseball mit.

it seems Roland heard the criticism of Akai's pads and went overboard to ensure the SP pads would keep working. the result seems to be more of a button than a pad (especially on the 404)

i don't know if you were serious or not with that comment but i laughed when i read it.

I've only touched the AKAI MPD24 pads and honestly there's nothing more button-like compared to any of the Roland pads I know of. The Akai MPD24 is really terrible as far as the pads concerned in my opinion....

cool, I would rather have button type pads than one that eventually goes bad. props to Roland for that. After getting used to the SP 404 pads I think they are good for making music too.

As mentioned a while ago the sub pad on the 404 seems a little less like a button. I wonder if thier intention was to make that a more accurate yet less durable pad.

Im not a fan of the 404s pads. They feel nice but they simply arent responsive enough. SP pads will probably last as long as the SPs themselves though.

I think you're right. I notice this particularly when I do a specific technique:

SAMPLING TIP ALERT

When I want to get a really fast 'roll' with a sample, like say 4 snare hits in very rapid succession, I cross-apply a little DJ trick. When you're scratching on some decks, and you want a sound to cut in and out very fast and consistently, you let a cut play out while you perform a technique called a 'twiddle' on the crossfader. It's easy to demonstrate, take your middle finger and tap your thumb, then immediately follow that with a tap from your index finger. Repeat. The trick is timing it so that while one finger is tapping your thumb, the other one should be moving into position to immediately follow that tap with another. Ideally, your fingers will make a little 'running man' motion. All you do is insert the crossfader between your thumb and fingers, and then you'd be twiddle cutting a particular sound. I'm going somewhere with all this, you just need the background...

SO, what I do is apply this same principle to a sample pad, only the pad has replaced my thumb. Here's how to apply the technique to a sample pad: Pick two opposite corners of your pad, bottom left and top right if you're using your right hand, bottom right and top left corners if you're using your left hand. One finger gets one corner. Then you do the twiddle motion (the running man thing with your fingers) against those corners of the pad. If you're trying to do it with a GATED sample (which is how most of my samples play), HERE'S THE TRICK, when you tap the pad with your index finger, you *must* be sure that finger has lifted from the pad *before* your ring finger hits. With a little practice it becomes pretty easy to roll of 32nd notes with any sample. And the major bonus is that you still have an entire extra hand to do other things with (scratch, launch other samples, tweak effects, or my favorite, twiddle with both hands on different pads, with some delay applied, and make a hellacious racket!)

It's a little confusing I know, and the payoff may not seem that important, but if you do a lot of live sequencing (I personally don't use any patterns) the doors this opens up is amazing. Like twiddling on one pad and stealthily striking another, all with just one hand. Hell, sometimes I do that with just the two fingers. Plus, like I said, you can get 32nd beat rolls going, which can be tricky with some samplers.

Back to the original point, you'll notice that twiddling is much easier on the SUB pad or the EXT SRC pad, since they're different from the sample bank pads. They seem much more like the 303's.

I use this technique to scratch on my MPC1k. I am not a DJ but i found out that this method of sample triggering (you call it twiddle) is indeed very good for making very quick sample chops.

that 'twiddle effect' works for real. i found that on the way.
to the post though one day i thought maybe the 5 pad triggered a little harder than the rest on mine

Yeah, I bought my SP 202 used, and it's been around for sure, but all the pads still work great.