I use the Hejnar RC4 replacement base for 410 geared head to get A-S plates on my 410. It's bombproof.
I gave up on the 222 joystick head about fifteen years ago. I found its adjustments were far too coarse for use on a tripod, and it just added unnecessary weight on a monopod.
You lasted longer than I did. I gave up after a few hours in the 1990s.
I could never get a 400mm lens pointed in the right direction with that grip head.
I do know that everyone switched them to Arca-Swiss.
I too owned the 222 head back in the day. I guess I'm one of the few whom actually liked it but I realized it's was only steady enough for smaller lenses.
I would spend a lot of money on a conversion but there is a quick and easy conversion: simply screw the 200PL-14 plate onto an arca compatible clamp. Mount the 200PL-14 plate on a 222 and attach your camera with acrca plate in the clamp. A dap of Loctite Blue and the plate will be very secure on the clamp. Just be careful not to bump the QR lock on the 222.
Both Desmond and Sunwayfoto make fairly inexpensive screw clamps:
I have that one on an old Bogan (manfrotto) head I converted and it works great. Plus you can still use an RC style (200PL-14) plate if you need to. Even wrote a review on it for some reason:
I still have mine, I like it a lot if you keep it within it's useful parameters. I learnt the hard way shooting medium format film with it that it's not made to be super steady or for heavier setups. I used to use it for weddings as a quick 'run and gun' tripod solution for a DSLR shooting at low but not too low shutter speeds.
I put a simple RRS Lever QR on mine. Only thing is it goes on sideways. Rotated 90 degrees. There is a big metal protrusion under the Manfrotto QR which when the native QR is removed stops the RRS from going on straight. I could have had it cut off but it didn't bother me to use the lever sideways. My palm works the lever rather than my fingers. I've got it in the cupboard somewhere and can dig it out to take a picture of if you want.
I was playing with it just now and trying to remember why. What the point of it was for my uses. Then it came back to me. The days of focus recompose with only a single reliable auto focus point. The centre one. Yeah, this kind of head made a lot of sense then when shooting people. Squeeze, focus on eye, squeeze, recompose, shoot, all within a second. Nowadays I'm not sure if there is any use I can think of which justifies its negatives. Not to say that there isn't, just that I can't think of one.
It has only a 2.5kg weight limit (divide that by half for real world use) and to all intents and purposes it puts a monopod on your tripod. It's big, very heavy and long. Manfrotto make a side handle joystick head (322RC2) which addressed a lot of these problems. It had a 5kg limit and didn't have the monopod effect. But the QR on it was curved to fit the shape of the head. You couldn't fit an aftermarket QR on it unless you used the solution mentioned above of attaching a QR to a QR which I'm rather iffy about.
Personally I went from the 222 to a Manfrotto 468 Hydrostatic (really nice till it committed suicide in the hot sun one day) and from there to RRS with the BH-40 that I still have and have no intention of changing.
