Greetings all!

['Silent' Crishoy Tanrein]

Hello TCSS Forum dwellers, I call myself Crishoy Tanrein, but my 'nick is 'Silent,' and it's a pleasure to meet/read you all!

I got into this hobby about a year ago, when I first learned of Ultrasabers. I bought a stunt saber. A year later, I bought a similar stunt saber, a coupler, and now I have my original goal; a saberstaff. It is currently being overhauled, and I want to do many things to them to learn about these customizations we can do to our sabers on these before I make my own saber from (near) scratch. I hope some time dwelling here will glean me some pointers, and I already have a question, but I'll look for the appropriate area to do that.

My immediate goal is finishing my saberstaff. Here is a small list of things I wish to do to it:
*Replace the LED's I got with them with these new LED's I just bought (Dark Violet Amethyst, a forum-member-only color for the Ultrasabers forum, which is where my first question lies)
*Learn how to make my own rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack, and recharge port
*Battle damage effect
*Make a *matching* pair of heavy-duty combat blades, where there does *not* appear to be a core, it is just diffused to the very edge of the blade
*Add accent LED's
*Add Power Level Indicator
*Add MR Soundboard, and learn how to make a switch that turns it on an off (so I may have it activate when turned on, or remain off while just the LED's are on)

During some recent dealings with Ultrasabers, I find myself wandering to other pastures, unfortunately. But I see this as a blessing in disguise, because I very much want to learn how to do this hobby-sized electronics stuff, it'll come in handy when the zombies take over and I need to use junk to make flashlights, trip alarms, motion sensor activated cameras, alarm systems, and the like!

For now, I'm just a guy about to turn 30, getting back into martial arts, taking care of my kids (which are all snakes, and a few scorpions and tarantulas), funding my college girlfriend through college, and trying to learn my new 5 string Schecter Raiden Special (BCH) bass! I prefer my bikes to cars, swords to guns (but I own a bunch of both), making bullets as opposed to buying, Vegetarian as opposed to omnivore, and D & D 3.5 as opposed to 4.0!

I'll shut up now, thanks for reading, please check out my second post, where I ask an annoying question!

PS - Once I get my windows drilled out in the emitter section of my Ultrasabers stunt sabers, I'll post pics before I put the Dark Violet Amethyst in!

[Boj-Vaati Mau]

Cool! There'll be help in your journey and welcome to TCSS. I do have one question though; what is D&D 3.5 or 4.0? I read & played from the Ancient Texts that were un-numbered...

[Silver Serpent]

Heh, I still have my Pink and Blue boxes, with the wax pencil. I remember the good old days when elves were a class instead of a race

[Boj-Vaati Mau]

Duuuude....that's just......archaic....

[Weaver]

I'll admit that I came to TCSS because I was tired of waiting for a response from US. I could not even ask a basic question about installing recharge ports into a $320 saber that I was about to buy from them. Call me crazy, but I think good customer service means at least taking an interest in processing an order.

Of course it's also the case that the holiday rush may have them swamped. I don't think that means I can't have a two-paragraph email explaining why I can or can not have the option I asked for. It's like neglecting to take the time to call your family when you're going to be late for dinner: 30 seconds would have it done and over.

Anyway, that's not important here. I'm just glad to see another gamer on the forum! I hadn't checked out any of the recent D&D editions, but heard there was some sort of scandal about how they'd mucked it up for the fans on one version or the other. I guess I'm weird: I take the best options from my books and throw away the rest.

You mentioned a saberstaff. I want one as well, but I figured it'd be best to crawl before I walk. I've got ideas about blade configurations, couplers, sound vents, and the rest. Those will wait until I've got the basics under my belt.

I do find it curious that you'd want the sound switch to be independent of the ignition of the LED. I suppose a potentiometer between the speaker and the board might work (not sure), or some kind of kill key for the speaker itself might be good. I wouldn't wire a separate switch for that myself, because of the potential to accidentally hit that while the saber is on. It's also possible I could forget that I turned off the sound.

Anyway, glad to meet you. Let me know how your first steps in this hobby go. I think I'll need about as much help as I can get.