Saber Forum

Okay gang, here is the long awaited review of my secret Wondercon purchase! As some of you guessed and the title claims, I bought the Arbiter. :) Some of you might remember a thread I did in the fanart section some time ago with a series of Saber designs I had been playing around with. One of which I even went so far as to plan out in MHS parts. Well.... US done went and re-released the Arbiter, and when the video came out on youtube and the email announcement hit my inbox, of course like any of the rest of you I looked her over in detail. I shortly realized that the Arbiter matched about half of what I planned to build. I thought it over, and over, and over. I had wanted a gold blade anyways, and SY was rumored to fit the bill. I LOVE Obsidian and was ready and willing to put that in the custom, and I HAD to be able to fight with the thing. Turned out all I really had to sacrifice from my plans if I got the Arbiter was accent LEDs, which is no biggie considering Obsidian's combat durability is a MORE than adequate trade off.

Anyways, down to the actual review. I'll take a rare step to the dark side and torture you all with lots and lots of text before the actual video. ;D

THE HILT:
The Arbiter itself is of course rated by the hilt, the design, the functionality, the appearance, and all that jazz. The Arbiter is 14 inches long, longer than any hilt I've ever seen or held with the exception of a full MR FX Maul Staff. It really feels like a small staff by itself, and that's not just the length, but the design itself. The hilt is designed to be largely a mirrored shape. The top half and bottom half look different, but feel and measure very similar. Even the weight of the two sections is similar in the hand. I find it wields equally well in a forward or reverse grip, and the feel stays the same either way which means you don't have to change your style much when you switch your grip, you just change which end you hit with. Your motions stay pretty much the same, Fluid with a capital f. lol That's more than I can say in that situation for any other hilt I own except MAYBE for a stock SI.

The Pommel is just the same as the one from the Archon, and that's fine with me. I like the look of it in solid silver more than I thought I would, it definitely looks better than the FX Luke pommel, and they are of similar styles. I make no secrets that this is my favorite pommel so far, it looks awesome and fits well with the styles of several OT and PT era sabers, and also has INCREDIBLE resonance.
The Main Body has some machined rings of varying sizes which make for a great grip. It's comfortable, and it looks nice. Much more detailed than the standard machined rings on hilts like the SI, or even the Bellicose I think. It's almost like having an after market grip already on there when you buy it!
The Grenade is just plain awesome, no two ways about it. It looks great, feels great, and works great. It gives you an incredibly stable and comfortable grip, and doesn't bite into the hand at all. No sharp edges anywhere. I should also tell you both main pieces of the hilt have a slimmer OD than I expected! They feel right in my hand, not oversized or thick at all. Just.... right. You all know the feeling. ;)
The emitter is fantastic, great choke point, the flange looks amazing, and there are these little holes all around the blade socket that give it real detail I haven't seen on any other emitter. FX replicas included.
The one odd comment I have on the hilt is it's got some sort of odd fogginess to it, but you only notice if you look real close, and it doesn't bother me at all. It cleaned up some with a little pledge. No biggie at all. The length can be a little akward though, and does take some getting used to. At first, it feels like it should be 2 inches shorter, but once you get used to it, the hilt is perfect.

Overall rating? 8.5/10

THE BLADE:
This is my first Initiate Blade. I made sure to order it on this hilt because I've had this horrible problem for several months. It's been an unusually cold and rainy winter for Southern California, and I've been stuck indoors in a double wide. In otherwords, no room to train even when I felt like shaking the laziness. lol I'm happy to say the 24 inch blade works perfectly indoors, though I still occasionally whack this or that. I also very quickly found it to be a great con blade. I saw plenty of people walking around with full length blades, but I could still get away with spinning mine even in the crowds, and it was pretty easy to snake through tight groups with it too. As far as the brightness, I'm in love. Due to the short length and Mid Grade thickness, this thing is so evenly lit it's incredible. Put it next to a full length Heavy Grade and it's no contest. Even against a Green LED! The length also means it has less bend to it, which was pretty much the only qualm I had with my Mid Grades. I like a more rigid blade, and this is just about perfect for me. Just slightly more flexible than a Heavy. :)

Overall Rating? 10/10

MAIN LED COLOR:
Sentinel Yellow. This color is phenomenal, this and Sunrider's Destiny are my two favorites. SRD is great, but SY is a color by itself. It actually looks different from every angle, and not like the other colors just getting lighter or darker, it... shimmers in a way. And being yellow, it shifts through spectrums of gold, orange, yellow, a little green, more of a lemon yellow. It's just totally different from the standard colors! And of course, the reaction you get to having yellow on a saber in public is just like orange. People FREAK because they don't know you can actually DO that! Those reactions alone would probably make it worth it without the color's previously mentioned properties.

Overall Rating? 10/10

FLASH ON CLASH:
I never missed this feature when I didn't know about it, but when it came out I was a little bit bummed I missed it. Now having bought a saber with it, I LOVE it! It's like Obsidian isn't complete without this feature. It just adds that extra push to make things more real. When you watch the unmucked with version of the Original Trilogy, there's that yellow flash and flicker when the sabers hit or lockup. They spark and hiss. We had the noises for that before, but the visual effect really pushes things over the edge.
Now, this actually is one of the special points of the saber. I was just not able to choose between Fire Orange or Adegan Silver for my Flash, I talked with Deep and Ultra about it, and when it was all said and done Deep built her with Fire Orange Flash on Clash. We all agreed it was the right choice, it looks FANTASTIC. It's a little more subtle than doing total opposite colors, but the orange and yellow combo really recreates the movie effect perfectly both for the flash on clash, and for the lockup flicker. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't order another Obsidian without the feature. It just makes the saber one step more real.

Overall Rating? 10/10

OBSIDIAN:
Well, Obsidian is a soundboard that speaks for itself. It's customization abilities have been well reviewed and spoken for, and are amazing in their own rite. The board boasts fully customizable soundfonts for boot, ignition, hum, swing, clash, lockup, and power down. It also is incredibly durable and combat capable, I've seen several put through their paces in person and they simply aren't going to break in a fight. They are very well designed and an excellent combat board with a growing list of capabilities and features. Not to mention that unlike all those Hasbro and MR boards out there, you can set the swing and clash sensitivities to your own preferences. That means if you're doing a spinning show you can cut the clash down to nill, or if you're fighting like mad you can bring it way up. If you want to just pose for pics, you can kill them both, or only the swings, or whatever. I'd played with all of those features in the past, but what I had never done before was mess around with the volume control. I thought standard volume was plenty loud enough, but this sucker seems to be tuned up since it was built in a noisy convention hall. All I know is that to me, this baby is louder than my Bellicose with Obsidian in a side by side test, and I've had two Obsidians run with the same volume many times before so I know what it's supposed to sound like. lol And at the convention, you could run this and still hear it just fine over the roar of background noise from the exhibition hall with NO problems at all. Even passing the show at the Marvel booth I could hear my swings go off!

Overall Rating? 10/10

OTHER POINTS:
There are a couple of other things I'd like to mention about this order. The service was awesome, everyone was just totally ready to serve. They had no problem with all my last minute 'oh, and can I get this?' additions, and were ready to answer all my questions, and even helped me decide on options I was up in the air about when they had plenty of customers at the booth. They really take the time to try and help everybody and make sure the orders are correct. Also, when I came to pick it up Ultra took the time out to check it himself and see what I'd finally picked for the loadout. It's cool to see genuine interest from the company owner in his product and customer, and I appreciate that a lot as a customer. Particularly in a crowded and busy convention hall. I've worked big cons and know what it's like to be on the other side of the booth. That kind of customer service isn't always so easy to give at these kinds of events. Mad props to Ultra, Deep, and the whole staff for that one!
The only really odd thing is something I didn't notice till after I got the thing home. There's a sort of funny electronic smell vaguely akin to fingerpaints I would say that's just all over the hilt, and especially the battery pack/soundboard/speaker assembly. My more electronics experienced Dad noticed it and thought it was very odd, describing it as the smell of electronics when something is wrong, but decided given the time it had been running (and has continued to run) without incident it must be fine. I've concluded that it's nothing worth worrying about. This saber has now been through everything short of a serious duel and has no problems save the quirky smell, which is only there when you crack the thing open to get at the batteries, or else if you literally smash your nose against it, though it was a little worse before I cleaned the hilt. Either way, it doesn't seem to be anything more than a funny quirk, and I don't mind it.

Overall Rating of Service? 10/10
Overall Rating of Funny Smell? mildly fingerpainty and somewhat amusing



Now, I will grant you all the video you have been waiting for. This would have been up hours ago, but I was watching Dragonball Z Season 4 on DVD most of the time I was writing the review and it kept stealing my attention. You see... it's a long story, but I never saw the Garlic Jr. Saga before this. I enjoyed it, FTR, and have also been considering naming this saber Vegeta, or else something Saiyan related. lol Enjoy my long winded video friends! Bwahahahahaha!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViHMqdcaMPk# (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViHMqdcaMPk#)

*your torture and my rare dark moment are now concluded, thanks for watching, and be sure to tune in next week for Captain Midnight*

YES!

This is beautiful; it was beautiful the first time I saw it and it's beautiful now.

It's definitely not too long.

Great buy.; point.

P.S. I'm glad you got stopped as much as I did and asked about your saber.

Thank you, I heartily agree. I'm loving this thing soooo much! You were right to ramble on so much for so long about your color, Spidey. It is all you said and more, and it's tough to put it's awesomeness into words or photos. It is really best said 'simply buy it yourself and see' lol

That Arbiter is spanking!

I'm just wondering if you remove the middle part, would it still function? Or can you replace it with a shorter MHS part. I'm already toying with the idea of placing a curved choke point and slanted emitter.

You can remove the Grenade Section, but you have to replace it with another MHS piece that's long enough to hold the MLS, because the MLS sits up at the top of that section normally and doesn't really fit between the switch and threads in the lower body section. Your combo would probably look BEAST on this hilt though! You should totally go for it!

Great review.... very long hilt though. Not sure if that length would be something for me. As its silver/metal it allows enough customisation. I am sure we will see plenty of that soon enough.

Awesome review and thanx alot for it...this was one of the hilts I was on the fence about. But now seeing it with more "hands on" video I'll have no problem getting the dark version for my Sith side.  ;D   As far as the length  staff all the way !  The yellow when you got close up to the blade was absolutely amazing ! From all the pics on the forums I would of thought it was more of a faded yellow. Might actually spring for Aeon LE stunt in SY when I send my Shock LE in for repairs. Again great review and much thanks. Enjoy a point ! :D

Very cool Manroon, great review.  The longer hilt definitely gives you a greater sense of control doesn't it?  The idea of course is that that the longer hilt gives you a greater lever with which to manipulate the blade, effectively decreasing the weight of the saber... but I digress.  It's kinda funny that you got it with an initiate blade too - makes the hilt over a third of the total length!

Just curious, are you planning on using a longer blade when it gets nice out?

Sweet saber Manroon! Yellow does seem like a very unique color. I might have to get one soon. Myabe for my birthday.

Nice Arbiter. Hope you had fun at WonderCon. I really want to go to one now. :P You get to see some unreleased sabers. How was the Monarch looking if you don't mind sharing? In person I mean. I really want one now. :P

Oooooooooooo, shiny.....

@Chain: Oh yes, it's VERY yellow! The camera just can't do it justice, but it's yellow for sure. Definitely not pale or washed out.

@Nero: Actually, it makes the hilt over half the length of the blade. Hilt: 14" Blade 24" lol But for control, I don't think it can be beat. I'm sure there's some weapon this is more like than a sword at this point, but I have no idea what it would be. Either way, it's epic to wield.  :D

@Tratus: Do it. Do it now! XD

@Zren: The Monarch is great, but just not for me. I think it really looks like something an alien might use, but it would also fit a human hand okay. If you look at the Nickle Plated version (don't think I actually got video of that at the con, come to think of it) you can really see the Sidious influence in it. It's very different from any other saber out there!

@TJ: Why, yes, yes it is. lol

I know!  Pretty ridiculous.  I was referring to the total length (blade and hilt included) but still.  You're talking about 14" compared to a total length of around 36"... that's nuts!  Very cool though.

Great review and very cool choices in led colors!

Nice. So its a Sidious themed saber. Looks good either way though. Is it all MHS or completely custom one piece saber say like the Liberator?

You know, I didn't actually check. I played around with the Manticore a little, and I'm sure it was MHS on both ends, but I had no real desire to go over the Monarch. It just isn't my style of saber. Nice, but not my style. From what I did look over of it though, I think the pommel might be MHS, but the emitter appeared to be one piece with the hilt body like on the Liberator, Prophecy, Bellicose, SI, etc

Me: So this is what I have in mind:

(http://i42.tinypic.com/24cs954.png)

Wife: It looks like your Bellicose with a curved part.

Me: It'll have a green blade. Plus our daughter would love it too. And she will stop pestering me about that new ipad.

Wife: I'll think about.

<cue-in whip app here>  ;D

Great review! Point for you. I wasn't completely sold on this hilt, until now. I think the only thing missing is a D Ring or covertech wheel.
I agree with you about the flash on clash feature. I got it on my Guardian and I can't imagine getting another Obsidian saber without it.

@qroon: Might have to do a little wire work to make that MLS fit in the smaller space, but I think you could do that okay.

@Araquay: Yep, the D-Ring or Covertec is about the only thing missing on here. I thought about ordering it with a Covertec, but I don't know if they could have done that at the con, and I prefer D-Rings typically anyways. I'm thinking I'll find a way to add my spare one onto the pommel somehow...

I wanna see some spinning! ;D

But that would require me to put the saber down long enough to set up the camera.... :-\ Maybe I'll do it on monday when my friend is over.  :D

Saber looks awesome! A note on the sound: I've noticed the Default Obsidian Sound is MUCH louder than most of the other fonts, so unless you've changed it since, that might be why it's so much louder. In fact I think I like the default sounds more sometimes for loudness and there are so many more clashes and swings haha.

I changed fonts a couple times last night and noticed it got slightly quieter, but even still... I believe this board is louder than the Obsidian MK1 was. When I did that video, my Bellicose was running a mixed font that included the Standard hum, if I'm not mistaken. Also, some of the other fonts out there do have quite a large number of swings and clashes in them! Personally though, I find I like to mix and match sounds from different fonts and come up with a slightly more 'personal' voice for each saber.  :)

Great review man.  It makes me think about making the Arbiter my next saber.  BTW what fonts did you use on the Bellicose?  I really like the ignition and hum. 

lol Thanks. I'm not sure off hand, but I wanna say I used the Ep VI ignition (basically Luke's, to my ears) and the hum.... was either the Ep I, or the standard Obsidian Default. Thinking it might have actually been the Ep I. I'll have to check my files at home later and see if I have those ones saved, if so, I can tell you for sure.

Ah, well it was just a thought ;) I have a few mix 'n' matched fonts I've made, but I'm constantly switching up what's on my saber, just cuz I have the ability to, I do! It really is a marvelous idea on Ultrasabers part! I haven't been too fond of the Arbiter, but seeing a good review on it has changed my opinion, I might consider one down the road! ^-^ I hope you continue to enjoy it!

I sort of just fell in love with this hilt to the point I may actually purchase one in the next few days.

I was wondering how the initiate blade handles in terms of actual dueling, it seems interesting.
Is it effective or more just fun to spin around?

I haven't dueled with it as yet, but I can tell you the initiate blade would work fine for it. It gives you LOADS of control.

I have a liberator I use a initiate blade on so I don't think it'd be -too- much of a stretch on this.
But really, point for you for making me love a saber I normally passed over.

Thanks for the review!  I've been looking at the Arbiter for a while, seems like almost no-one has them.  Good to see someone's view on it!

Thanks guys! Yeah, I have to admit.... a good portion of my excitement for this saber before I purchased it was split between my guess that I'd be the first to have one in SY, and the guess that I'd have one of the first of these Arbiters. I knew of several that had shown up on the forums back on the last round of Arbiters, but after those disappeared a few months ago, and then these showed up.... I haven't seen any other reviews except mine. And only one or two other members have stepped forward to tell me they have one. lol

Either way, it's really a great hilt. I love it! A word of advice to any planning to purchase it though, I've found SY with Obsidian FoC REALLY sucks batteries A LOT. I ran mine on a fully charged set today, only used them long enough to change the font twice this morning, pulled them back out about 10 minutes later, then had them in for the half hour trip home. When I got home.... they were low enough not to be able to clash without shutting down. lol So if you get SY.... get spare batts with it. You WILL need them! XD

That 10watt LED really sucks some juice, doesn't it?  :D

BTW, that smell is machine oil.  There's some machine oil residue inside your hilt.  Doesn't hurt anything, but it explains the "fingerpainty" smell when you take out the batts  :D

Boy does it! lol I'm really having to watch to be sure I keep both sets of my Lith Ions charged now. Gonna have to pick up an extra set with my next order. ;) Maybe two sets to be safe... still have Otenbasan to look after too.

Machine Oil, huh? That's what I thought it was. My Dad was just sure it reminded him of something else, but I had a feeling it was some sort of oil since the electronics have been running perfectly. Not to mention it was a lot better after I hit the thing with some Lemon Pledge on the outside.  :D

(http://data.whicdn.com/images/11497125/tumblr_lnobvu89Ur1qazkdco1_500_thumb.gif)

ROFL tj you cheeky monkey

any whooo, yeah i have two obsidain sabers with foc and the batteries drain pretty quickly, but foc sure is awesome the arbiter must be a beast to wield  :) i think i recall a member a while back that bought two and made a staff out of them. using one must be hard enough but two?  :o

Put in a War Glaive emitter on the Arbiter and it will be regal. It'll look like a sceptre!

The Arbiter is a total beast.  ;D She's actually pretty easy to wield so far though, but we'll see. She should be getting her first battle tonight. ;)

Also.... gonna just come out and say this now. I don't care for the War Glaive. Not my kind of saber, not my kind of emitter. Too sithly, and too angular. If I ever did claws.... it'd be Raven all the way for me, but then again I'm not a claw guy either. Too sithly. lol Besides, the emitter is one of the Arbiter's best features!

I actually have to agree. Even as a Sith saber, the Glaive just isn't my thing. I might consider a Dark War Glaive w/ silver claws though....

As far as the Arbiter, I'm not so sure it's my thing either. That design just doesn't look right without a control box.

Teej, didn't I mention I'd be doing custom work on this? I'm sure I did... and since when I have I done custom work without at least thinking about a box?  ;D

Actually, my main problem on this one will be figuring out how to do a removable shroud without using screws....  :P

I figured you would be, Wingmate! Can't wait to see it with a box!

So the MLS unit won't accomodate just a regular MHS emitter without a choke/extension? Could you please provide a picture of how much space there is to work with when the grenade extension is removed? Thanks a lot.

From the looks of it, I'm guessing not nearly enough room for the extra wire, let alone the MLS from the end of the main body to the power button.  To me it looks like less room than a Shock. and that has MAYBE a inch room when the MLS is in.

I like the Arbiter but its too big for me. I hope US does a V2 Rattlesnake saber. That'd be sweet.

I don't have a pic right now (I just had it apart for something, and I really hate having to open her up when I don't absolutely have to, especially since I just closed her lol) but I might get one next time I have to open her up for anything. But I CAN tell you right now that there is indeed less than an inch of room between the switch and the threading, so there really is NO room there for anything. lol

Also, a small update. Had the first duels with her last night... and it seems there's a minor problem. Had Pops take a look at it (he has some electronics experience), and we think we've got it IDed. I shot some pics a minute ago and am about to send the guys an email. I'm sure we'll get it all sorted out in short order. I'll let you all know how it goes! :)