If you see any, get BeatGear.  I've finally had a chance to look over the design, and it's far superior to Konami's high-maintainance hulks, let alone the junk you can buy from DDRGame.

Cobalt Flux makes the most versatile pad, but it isn't optimised for any game except technomotion.

I'd recommend looking a mymybox's lineup; their service is sketchy, but they carry some good products.

Also, homebrew may be a good solution if you have some basic building and wiring skills.

Good luck!

I've played with both a CF and RO Afterburner:

CF's are extremely durable and they did end up making a mod kit for raised panels (I've only played on a CF without raised panels and I couldn't figure out where I was on the pad half the time), so it's a safe bet.  I don't know how exactly the modkit works, so I don't know how it affects the extra 5 panels.  Never seemed terribly sensitive to me, I felt like a had a lot of unwarranted misses between the lack of raised arrows and the panels that didn't want to move (extremely tough to trigger them by hand).  Unless they changed things, the surface is a bit slipperly IIRC.  In the end, it's a good pad, but very different from arcade play (which is what mattered to me, since I was training for tournaments).

Red Octane's Afterburner (I have one, I played 3-4 hours a day for the first ~5 months on it and then slowed down a bit) was built from the start to be arcade style and is a comparable to playing on a machine, honestly.  They're about as sensitive as an ITG dedicab (quads are no problem either by using your hands or hitting two panels with each foot) and when I was still training seriously, I had no problem playing 11's on it (I could almost clear delirium EX no bar on it, actually), the arrows are easy to grip.  The control box has USB output, so you may have fewer issues with lag/synching than when using an adapter, but early batches had wiring issues where the USB/Xbox outputs stopped working at random.  RO promised replacement parts would be for sale at low markup on their site within a couple months of release, and 3 years later there's still nothing; a lot of people had arrows crack soon after purchase.  3 of my 4 cracked in under 2 months, but it never affected the sensors or gameplay and the cracks never grew - I emailed RO immediately after the first big crack and they said parts should be on the site soon (this was ~2 months after the first release), but if there were more delays on new parts and my pad worsened they'd replace it for free any time since I messaged them within the 90-day warranty.  I'm not sure if they'd still honor it 3 years later, but I don't play at home anymore because I really can't.  In the end, it gave me a scare early on, but I've never had any problems with mine (though many people claimed to have a lot more problems); I prefer it to a CF (at least an unmodded CF) and it's a bit cheaper, but the durability is questionable.

I also got a free softpad from them about 3 years ago during some promotion thing, and it was one with a foam middle, but it was the most responsive soft pad I have ever used. It's at my parents' house still, and if I were to use any soft pad it would be that one. (I think it was a blueshark soft pad).

MyMyBox pads are definitely a good value for the price. I bought 2 metal DDR pads about 5/6? years ago from them, and they have both served me well, and still work today. They aren't as responsive as the Afterburner sounds, but you can easily mod the MyMyBox pad (at least my model) to change the sensitivity however you like it.

Service from them is pretty much, do it yourself. Replacement parts are pricey, but available the last time I checked (two years ago) but I only had a few small cracks in my arrows.
Again, this is about a 6 year old pad, so their products do last, as long as you don't get a defective one of a shady eBay seller (like I did).

rest of the thread is stupid you can go with an afterburner

Just because you happened to get a decent one doesn't mean all of them are good.  I have yet to play on one that's acceptable.

Also, didn't you have to mod the hell out of yours in order to get it to work right?  The design simply isn't stable.  It leaves far too much to chance.  I personally would never waste $250 on an Afterburner when I can easily get a slightly lower-quality pad of the same design on ebay for less than two sevenths of the price.

sry i got mine for 100

A'ight nice

$100's good for an Afterburner.

CF's are terrible. Mine literaly fell into pieces after about 5 months. I bought a Blueshark 3" with bar from a friend and it came in the mail yesterday. After about 30 mins of playing it on ITG2PC the game froze up and the pad ceased to work. I tried plugging it into my PS2 and it couldn't read the pad. If I can get it to continue working I'm sure it will be great as I have heard many good things about. But as for TX's and Cobalt Flux's, don't waste your money on them.

Sorry to hear that chris. But CF's arent really that great. I played on one and i got a lot of way offs.

Yeah. CFs only last so long until the buttons start jamming up and pressing themselves. My friend had one and we played in socks (almost never shoes, because we tried breaking it in at first) and the buttons started jamming up after about 4 months. Way offs and decents are almost ensured after about half a year of playing with a CF.

That's too bad; I played on one for a few hours and got three AAA's, about 40 flags, about 80 SDG's, and a 3210 combo.

The new CF's are actually pretty good quality if you follow standard maintainance procedures.  Note that these are definitely NOT the maintainance procedures recommended by CF.  If you don't know how to maintain a CF but want to get a CF, feel free to email me and I'll give you a long list of things you need to do to get your 300 dollars worth.