Hey,
My Dissident finished its loooong journey to my home in France yesterday.
So I think it's review time.
First, in case there is some french people around looking for infos :
— I ordered on the last day of december (litterally, the date on the order is the 31) and my postman came yesterday. So, it took a little less than one month)
— Custom taxes were 114€ (for a $450 order), so, yeah, take that into account and allow yourself an additional 100 budget.
Now, let's start the review :
I ordered a Champion tier Dissident, with the classic dual tone finish, black stingray wrapping and Viridium soundfont. For the blade, my choice was a 37" Amber blade. (It's probably my only regret, I feel the 37" a little bit too long, probably should have gone with a 32".)
Just out of the box, it felt already great.
I selected the black stingray wrapping with an idea. I wanted to try a tsukamaki (the katana style wrapping) myself. So I sat on my bed watching some videos and started to work.
It took me 3 times before having something not too bad. I took pictures during everyone of them so I'm not sure wich one is the last try.
I'm pretty sure this one is the first try. The next one is the third, since I didn't made any node before.
For the last pictures I tried with a #7 pommel I ordered with it cause I thought it would look good. But after different tries I'm not so sure about it.
So, what do you think ? Normal pommel or #07 ?
For the review itself : the hilt feels wonderful. A bit bigger than I thought but really great. It's heavy and with the blade on it's just sick, I love it ! As I said at the beggining of the review, I just should have ordered a shorter blade, but for the rest... Awesome.
It really feels solid and well crafted. The buttons are not easy to accidentally push, so that's great. I juste removed the little piece of cloth on it which did not looked reaaly great.
So, yup, I'm really glad of my choice and I really love my first saber.