Decision to purchase HTM

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USArmyRecon

Joined
Nov 20, 2013
Messages
23
Hello all,

I realize this is only perhaps my third post, but given some of the posts in this forum recently, I felt that posting this could potentially be helpful to others experiencing a similar dilemma. I recently made the decision to add another high end folder to my collection (high end for me is a blade $300+). After becoming fairly enamoured with many of Mr. Ralph's designs, I was leaning heavily toward either a 4 or 5.5" Madd Maxx. Decided to, as always, do my additional research on bladeforums.com. After seeing the mountains of controversy swirling around HTM (http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...th-Ti-Framelock-and-CF-G-10-PICS-INPUT-NEEDED)
I had firmly decided that purchasing from this company would be foolish.

Thankfully, I continued to browse the forum before purchasing something different. There are MULTIPLE posts in which Mr. Ralph very clearly acknowledges a brief period of QC issues, and makes direct offers to buyers to repair the issues.
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...Customer-Complaint?highlight=madd+maxx+issues

QC issues are inevitable, it is how they are handled that ultimately matters. My faith is firmly restored in HTM's efforts to deliver quality, and I am super stoked to make this year's Xmas present a Madd Maxx. My hope is that anyone else who might have been appreciative of Mr. Ralph's designs, only to be turned off by some of the negative "press" reads this.
 
I want to be in the same boat as you but have yet to see and end of the QC issues. It seems HTM has yet to put out a run with an acceptable amount of QC problems. Time will tell I guess but there have been way to many "oh sh&$" moments from HTM and Mr. Ralph recently to earn an "atta boy" or a penny from me.

Also, apology or not directly insulting a member here and trying to ban him for letting his displeasure with a product be known will not go away.
 
There are definitely some blades with QC issues floating around out there. But I'm confident Darrel, Lacey, and the rest of the HTM crew will take care of things if you have issues. Definitely you should be able to buy an HTM knife without wondering if it's going to have issues. But I also think it may be unfair to say that there's not been an end to QC issues with current runs, because certain dealers haven't bothered to check their inventory to see if they have any, and so there are still second and third gen Gunhammers out there, being passed off as current editions, by retailers. On one particular order, I got a knife that had CLEARLY been used. It was super dull, but not only that, it had the finish worn off the top where the thumb stud impacts, and light scratching on the blade. And that was shipped to me as a NIB knife.

So, I'm hesitant to entirely blame Darrel and company, especially because they'll take care you if you do have issues, and they don't mark up the knives when you buy direct to any significant degree, so you can get a knife direct from HTM and have a much higher degree of assurance that you'll get a knife that has no QC issues.

That being said, I think it might be a smart move to let the various resellers know that they should look over the blades they purchased in that time frame or otherwise issue a recall, so all the knives with poor QC come back to HTM and none go out to new customers. That's a great way to sour someone on a brand forever.
 
Couldn't agree more with the incident involving a certain vitamin C deprived forum member. Very distasteful. You can believe that I will re-post regarding my exp with the purchase, and hopefully I will be able to sing some praises (bc, goddamnit, I just really like the Madd Maxx design!)
 
I'd wait until you actually have the knife in hand before recommending it to other members.

USArmyRecon said:
Couldn't agree more with the incident involving a certain vitamin C deprived forum member. Very distasteful. You can believe that I will re-post regarding my exp with the purchase, and hopefully I will be able to sing some praises (bc, goddamnit, I just really like the Madd Maxx design!)
Click to expand...
 
PS, I don't know the entire story, but it seems like there is also some hesitation with fixing up the folks who bought into the forum knife (S90V GH model); I would've expected them to be priority numero uno.
 
I'd wait until you actually have the knife in hand before recommending it to other members.
Click to expand...

Not recommending, only pointing out that I missed a significant number of posts which ultimately changed my mind about doing business with the company.
 
I'm honestly not sure what the whole story is either. I have a few issues with mine, but I never asked for them to be taken care of, so that's not on Darrel. I'm pretty sure a lot of the others decided they just didn't want the knife because it wasn't worth the money paid in their opinion. I don't know what Darrel offered, or if they even tried to get service. I'd want to know the whole story before I made any comments on it. Get the Maxx direct, and I'd expect you'll be happy.
 
My Madd Maxx 4 is what motivated me to join blade forums. I ordered mine from bladehq and just received it yesterday. This is the most expensive knife I've ever purchased. But that's not to say I'm not familiar with pricey knives. I have several high end zero tolerance blades. But I have to say this HTM Madd Maxx 4 is so incredibly smooth, light and solid, that I'm already looking to buy a Madd Maxx 3 as well. Here's my review of the MM4, which I purchased to be an EDC knife.

1. The knife is big. It's thicker than my ZT350, for example, even though the ZT is a liner lock and this is a frame lock.
2. I'm considering removing the carbon fiber insert. The benefit of the insert is that it's quite grippy. It's more grippy, for example, than the G10 scales on the ZT350, perhaps even more grippy than the textured scales on the ZT560, all of which is fine if you're carrying the MM4 in pants that can handle the abrasion. But depending on how often the knife is carried and how often you wear the same pants, I could see it seriously abrading the pants over time.
3. The assisted opening blade deployment is easy but not too easy. For example, my complaint about my ZT560 is that there seems to be little detent keeping the blade closed. So it's easy to partially open the ZT560 unintentionally. The MM4, because it's an assisted opener, has a good resistance to accidental deployment but doesn't require so much pressure to open the flipper that you have to press really hard. There was some Kershaw flipper-based knife I tried at Northern Knives the other day which had a small and hard to press flipper. The MM4 opens perfectly with the flipper.
4. The frame lock is solid and the knife almost sings as it locks up.
5. I really like the pocket clip. It has enough lip that you can slide it over pocket edges without much effort. It has a good bit of retention to it. I only wish there were multiple mounting options. I imaging there aren't because I suspect HTM DDR wanted to have fewer holes in this sleek knife rather than more. But the lack of mounting options are what motivated me to join blade forums, because I read on the web that I could find DDR's contact info here. I'm considering sending him the knife to have it drilled for tip down carry, allowing an assisted wave draw. I've practiced it with the knife without the clip and am very excited about that possibility.
6. The blade quality, sharpness and finish are great.

I have no regrets about this purchase and I'm aware of no QC issues. I'll update this post in a couple of months if anything changes. But I expect this is going to remain my favorite pocket knife.
 
I have recently purchased 2 madd maxx 5.5 knives as can be seen by my recent post on this thread.
They both came with no defects etc. and I am very happy with them, however; one of the 2 knives has some play on the lock up which needs to be professionally adjusted. I haven't contacted HTM because I haven't been willing to part with it but I will be contacting them shortly. Aside from this one issue, I'm very happy with the product. (the knives are really stunning to look at and of excellent quality)

A few other observations about my 2 Madd Maxx knives
1) very light and easy to carry
2) very thin blade (strictly self defense type of knife and not for cutting tree limbs out in the back yard, etc...)
3) the smooth , high gloss, titanium handle finish is more prone to scratching

overall I absolutely love both my madd maxx knives
 
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Cool, glad to hear you guys are happy with the Madd Maxxes!

As Aug guy mentioned, Darrel and co. do a great job of packing that 5.5-inch blade into something that's actually carryable and usable. My first full custom DDR knife was actually a MM 5.5 that I bought from Darrel at a show. I was trying to decide between the MM 5.5 and a MM 4 that Darrel also had at the show. I loved the trident blade shape and CF inlay on the 5.5 but was leaning toward the 4 simply because I didn't think the 5.5 would be practical to carry. Darrel seemed to sense what I was thinking and said "put it in your pocket". I did, and could barely even tell it was there.

A 4" Gunhammer or MM is still my perfect EDC size, but the MM 5.5 is the one folder with a 5+ inch blade that I would actually carry on a regular basis if I had reason (besides cool factor) to carry that long of a folder.
 
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