I successfully replaced one joystick on gaben's meme knuckles, and now the joystick drift is gone. It was relatively straightforward if you've ever done basic soldering or cell phone repair before. I followed https://youtu.be/s4R7GnDEV5o , it's pretty straightforward even if you don't understand russian, or here's a non-visual tl;dw

1. lift the front plastic off the the face of the controller, it just has a few plastic clips and some weak adhesive. be careful when removing and disconnect the ribbon cable to the touchpad.
2. remove the two screws holding the palm strap.
3. remove the three screws holding the circuit board on.
4. pry up the center haptic motor off the plastic bit with a knife. it's relatively strong adhesive, make sure to get under the PCB fiberglass.
5. unscrew the screw hidden under the haptic motor, lift off plastic bit and disconnect ribbon cable.
6. lift up entire top PCB, disconnect ribbon cable to the trigger, and connector to the base of the controller.
7. desolder the joystick module, with desoldering braid and/or suction bulb and/or sucker. If you're bad at it like me, once you get enough of the solder off you can clip the leads with a needlenose wire cutter and pry it off.
8. solder the new joystick in.
9. reassemble.

You don't have to reset any software or anything, since it's the same exact joystick except with metal internals instead of shitty plastic (which you can see melted a bit in my really amateur desoldering job).

I did break the ribbon cable connected to the plastic joystick top like a year ago, but all it does is capsense so it's not critical if you happen to break yours too. I also lost the little metal spring in the palm strap mechanism too but so far it's fine, just the palm strap doesn't pop out automatically when you reset it.