Chad Arnow wrote: | ||||||
No one? That's a pretty sweeping generalization. There are people here who like all price ranges. Please don't paint everyone with such a large brush. :) This forum does have a general focus on how items stack up when compared to historical pieces. It's part of the description that hangs below our logo on every page. :) But we don't ignore or hate certain price ranges as a whole.
Who said "god-like?" :) Albion has their fans. And their detractors. I personally like the stuff I have from them (bought several years ago now), but they've gotten too expensive for me. They've had a handful of quality issues that have gone public; I'm waiting to see how they get resolved. They do some things really well. So do other companies. There are plenty of other fish in the sea, as they say.
Check out this thread for a view of a flaw in craftsmanship: http://myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=30929 My personal issues with DSA stem more from hype and marketing that is questionable than from the products themselves. They claim a high level of historical accuracy, but some products are pretty far off in ways that make little to no sense. They (still!) claim museum and/or historical attributions that have been proven false. They have copied other makers' non-historical works, a violation of intellectual property rights. Etc. As for the products, they can sometimes have many of the same issues as others in the price range: clunky design, shapes and proportions are off, weight/taper/handling issues, scabbards that in some cases are historical for some period (just not for the sword it's paired with), occasional build quality issues, etc. |
I apologise if my tone was a little aggressive or accusatory in my initial post. From what I could tell, DSA products, though generally cheap to mid-range in price still seemed to be a cut above the rest of the competition in that price range, given that they were hand made. I admit I know very little about swords and how a sword is supposed to feel or handle. But as far as I could tell from reviews and such, a DSA weapon was gonna be more durable and it was gonna last a good while longer than the other competion in the 300 - 500 dollar price range. I was just a little frustrated that my best shot at a decent sword was being unfairly compared to laser-cut prefection and tossed aside because it didn't sport a $1200 price tag and couldn't have fooled Charlemagne. But hey, I do understand that greater price often = greater quality and who knows, maybe if really get into this hobby, it might be worth eventually trying saving up for a fancy Albion :).
By the way, I've read that review before, and I'm inclined to dismiss that case as a 'lemon' in the batch. No one else has seemed to have as serious and dangerous a problem as that individual (with dsa's recent production runs anyway). Or if they have, they haven't been reported.