TOPIC: ASP reviews - Negotiator and Forgiveness

Oops, I seem to have lost an arm.

It may be time to fall back to foam-wrapped bokkens until I gain a few skill levels.

That was like 5 minutes ago, so I assume it'll be purple by tomorrow.

Just in time for a wedding T.T I am so so so SOOOOO sorry!!! I love you! You're a terrible swordsman but i love you!

OUCH! Anticipate attack, dodge, then counter,,,,,,

Beautiful ASP sabers, thanks for sharing your experience!

Okay, lacrosse gloves acquired. I found some relatively inexpensive ones called Under Armour "Strategy". They have thick impact armor on the back of the wrist, hand, all fingers, and the sides of the outer two fingers. They came recommended in a TPLA video as a cheaper alternative to HEMA gloves.

And some bracers cobbled together from clearance items at a going-out-of-business sporting goods store. We ended up with kid-sized shin guard inserts and sleeves.

We've only tried them briefly so far, but some quick tests show that they should work pretty well. At least, it should be able to prevent any more incidents like I had a few days ago, where my little finger got crushed badly enough I'm still not sure if it might be slightly broken.

The gloves do unfortunately interfere with grip a bit though. They make my hands significantly wider (apparently not designed for someone with long thin hands), and I can't really reverse my grip well while wearing them. Perhaps that will get easier after they're broken in. If not though, reverse grip is usually a bad idea anyway... it mostly just looks cool.

I tried some Nike Vapor gloves at a local megachain store and they had a better fit, but they also cost more than twice as much. Reviews for them also weren't so great. A type called STX Stallion 300 also had a decent fit and good reviews and nice basic styling, but were again pretty expensive. So, the cheaper option prevailed.



I hope now we can have more interesting duels without actual injuries.

Edit: Has been three weeks now, still waiting for my finger to heal enough. So yeah, I broke it. Oops. At least now I can use it for typing, even if it's not yet healed enough for dueling.

What's the diameter of the hole in the bottom of Pommel 8? I'm wondering if it could be used as an emitter.

WookieeGunner wrote: Mine seems to be about 18.5mm, not even close to the 25.4mm it would need to hold a blade or blade plug. Plus, you'd need to add a hole for a retention screw and cut out the grate inside to let light through.

Thanks, exactly what I wanted to know.

Hi, just a quick update. We got RMA'd parts back today.

The pommel is a brand new one, but still has exactly the same issue as the original one. The shroud's retention screw hole is still in the wrong place so it attaches only at a very very weak part of the inner pommel. So, we swapped in a longer screw again and threaded it hard into the deep part of a groove for increased stability. Without doing this, it would fall apart while dueling (like the last one did). This picture illustrates the misplacement of the shroud hole:


SF shipped a brand new ASP electronics unit instead of replacing just the damaged speaker. The new unit has an upgraded SaberCore board which doesn't get hot in standby mode, so that's a pretty nice bonus. However, the speaker is still clipping during loud sounds. It's not clipping as badly though; sounds like the speaker is physically intact but overdriven.

Update: With the parts actually installed in the hilt, the sound is totally fine. Not sure exactly why it was clipping in open-air use, but the hilt provides the stability or resonance or lowpass or whatever it needed to sound better. And it seems louder than any of the other sabers I've heard, enough that it tickles my hand through the solid handle of the hilt.

The new board has much nicer standby power draw, about 4.5mA (or about a month total standby time):


Overall a win, but it'd still be nice if the pommel shroud's hole was placed better.



Also, an update on my green saber. Today it got hit pretty hard and the blade light went out. I immediately took it apart to find out why, and discovered that the other side of the emitter resistor had broken free from its wire. So I soldered it back together and it's fine now, but the resistor connection is apparently pretty brittle. Both sides of it broke and had to be repaired, even with heat shrink protecting it.

When I put it back together I routed the wires extra-carefully, which allowed the LED to sit deeper in the hilt. This makes my new green day blade look better (it had glue a bit high inside, which looked weird through the windows, but now it's mostly hidden) and makes the blade plug fit without trimming.

Oh, and in case I forgot to mention it before, I upgraded my saber a couple weeks ago with a charge port and lighted switch. This makes it much nicer overall.

I think I've decided not to weather the hilt because I have a weathered Gladius now. The pair looks better with one being shiny. Hopefully I'll have time to get and share some decent pictures soon.