It's here! It's finally here!
First of all I would like to tank Phil and the entire Saberforge team, new and old! I was so excited to be a part of the original Kickstarter campaign for ASP, I think this a great idea/system and I cant wait to purchase the electronics and more parts once this whole thing goes live.
Second I would like to toot my own horn for a second and say I was 100% patient with this entire process. I look at all these comments and complaints on the campaign site and I wonder how people get through life, honestly. Not a single comment came from my direction about the amount of time this was taking, or the apparent lack of communication on Phil, or anyone's part. I feel that this was an acceptable amount of wait time, given the multitude of varying circumstances involved. I also feel that Phil and company gave updates where they were needed, and that anything more would have just made the wait seem loner and more frustrating. Sorry, had to get that out finally.
Now then, my ASP hilt! I went into this knowing exactly what I wanted; a companion piece to my weathered, reptile wrapped Disciple. I had only really had my disciple maybe six months before this campaign appeared, so I was pretty set on something similar but complimenting. I decided to go with something with the same wrap and with the Fury emitter, as I was pretty sure that emitter inspired the look of the acolyte and disciple saber emitters.
so my prat list is as follows:
ASP . Pommel 3 . Weathered
ASP . Dissident Body . Weathered . Black Reptile
ASP . Fury Switch . Weathered
ASP . Fury Emitter . Weathered
ASP . Blade Plug 4 . Black
with the stretch goals I could get either an extra part, which I believe were limited to pummels, or a blade. I figured a blade would be best, that way I would only have to purchase the sound board and LED once ASP went live.
The toblerone of joy showed up today, and I was a little nervous. After opening her up though, I realized there was nothing to be nervous about! Everything came assembled, which I would think was an obvious choice by the SF team, to limit any damages during shipping. Some people seem to think they should be shipping each part wrapped separately, but I'm fine with this. They shipped one of the little plastic fake buttons separately, obviously so I can easily install ASP electronics when I see fit, without having to poke that button out. And of course they sent me an allan key for tightening/loosening the retention screw.
All the parts are machined with the usual quality we've come to expect from SF. There are a couple small notches on the switch section. I wouldn't call them dings or scratches, as they are fairly even and symmetrical on both sides of the part. They're probably just where the part was held during its weathering process. between the emitter and the switch sections there are to little metal rings. these seem to be there to ensure that everything lines up the way I want/the way it looks best.
This thing is the perfect companion piece to my Disciple! It's amazing how good they look as a set, I'm still very much in awe of how well this worked out. Of course my disciple now becomes a shoto and the Dissident Fury, as I've come to call it, becomes my main hilt. Anyway, thank you for reading my little review, enjoy the pics!
UPDATE: the ASP builder has some of the lengths of the parts in this build wrong, I haven't measured each part, but the site says this hilt should be 1' 3.5" and I'm measuring it at 1'2". that's a good inch and half in difference. Just a heads up to anyone that is determining a purchase based partially on the length of their build.