I'm not Mr. Emerson, but I think that I'll give this a go.....
=)
With most of my adult life being dedicated toward academic professional training, researching my purchases has become habit for me. Any time I hop onto a new Forum/d-board, the "search" function is one of my first stops, and I can literally spend hours per day --spanning into weeks -- reading about my potential purchases.
This was much the same when I recently decided to look into purchasing an Emerson and a Benchmade to add to my modest rotation of daily users.
Searching these Forums here and that of KnifeForums.com, I, too, noticed the same issues as you did regarding the Emerson production line -- but I also saw similar quality-control complaints with Benchmade as well; and other companies, such as my beloved Spyderco, were not immune to these complaints, either. Even full-custom makers like the Strider guys are not free of such complaints.
Believe me, for this purchase, it got to the point where I e-mailed several of my international friends from other hobbies -- ones I knew how also loved blades -- to scope out the Benchmade Q/C situation, to hear it first hand from people I "knew."
As a fellow blade enthusiast, I'm sure that this has not escaped your careful eyes.
But then again, I implore you, aaron, to take the time to do on-line searches for reviews/opinions of other high-end products and services. Have a look at Mercedes and BMW -- or how about The Four Seasons and The Ritz Carlton. Are their on-line reviews spotlessly positive? or are you now thinking twice about either buying one of these fine automobiles or staying a night in these world renowned hotels?
Along these same lines, have a look at CandlePower Forums. CPF is a congreation place for flashlight enthusiasts. Being a blade enthusiast, you might be familiar with the SureFire name. These are considered to be among the top illumination tools in the industry, and yet, search CPF, and you'll find posts similar to those found here complaining of everything from supposed product quality defects to customer-service unpleasantness. After reading those posts, I'd daresay that you'll never want to buy a SureFire product ever again -- and yes, I've seen many newbies un-necessarily turned off by or turn away from these excellent illumination tools by such just threads.
The Internet has become a place for the vocal minority to air their greviances, no matter how small and trivial or how serious or dire. At the same time, it has also become the playground of staunch "fan-groups" whose dedication to any one marque may make their behavior often reflect blind ignorance to facts or outright violent outbursts to detractors. The atmosphere is polarized to the extremes -- you'll rarely find many posts by someone who is "just" satisfied with the product. Look at the names/handles of those posting on either side of the argument, and you'll find many who can literally fit a "team roster" without even having to do IP confirmations for any trolls.
The serial number on my 2003 production Waved, Black-T coated Commander BTS is in the 3000 range. I know that there are complaints here from those who've sampled multiple copies but have found the liner top be insufficient; but I also know of many Suspects who've had nothing but good things to gush about their production, semi-custom, or custom Commanders. Yet, even if both of these total to one hundred individual samples -- and I'm being generous here -- what of the other 2900?
All that I can say is that my Commander was very sharp out-of-the-box. Its blade was centered, the finish is no worse than any of my other factory or custom/semi-custom blades from any other marque/maker. The liner engaged positively and passed what I would deem to be a reasonable spine-whack test by myself, and I cannot get the liner to slip no matter how hard I squeeze the scales (and I'm a trained martial artist of a school which has a strong foundation in grappling, so my grip strength, if not above-average, is certainly no worse than average). The blade slides out nicely using the thumb disc -- the action, while not as frictionless as my Spyderco Viele (often reviewed to be the smoothest full-production manual folder), is still quite smooth, and the reprofiled Wave catches everything from my $40 Eddie Bauer jeans to my $400 Zileri slacks and fully deploys and locks the blade open.
Do I trust the blade to be a crowbar? No -- but then again, I wouldn't ask that of any of my folders regarding og their locking mechanism; and even for my fixed Strider BT tanto, a full 1/4-inch of Bos S30V, that's still mistreating a blade. Would I trust my Commander to be a last-ditch self defense slasher and to even deliver a final stab to the subclavian/aortic arch? I don't think that any decent folder, again regardless of locking mechanism, wouldn't be able to do that unless I hit bone by mistake.
In terms of customer service, I ordered a simple "Skull" clip from their on-line store, and they even had the courtesy to e-mail me -- which I rarely get in return, I shop frequently and internationally on-line for a variety of both production and custom products) -- to report a backorder on even just this small, $12 component.
But did I -- a satisfied customer -- post before today?
No, I didn't.
And I think that the other 2900 owners of the sister copies of my 2003 Commander (or even just 1,000 of them, assuming that a generous 2/3 of all those produced are still sitting with retailer/re-seller stock) may just be my type of "moderate" but fully satisfied customers who either have not expressed their satisfaction, or are not members of these on-line communities such as BladeForums.
I think that in our own striving to make sure that what we've purchased or are going to purcg=hase the best quality "X" for our money, we have become -- as is our human nature -- too sensitive to the cautionary tales or warnings, no matter their quantity, quality, or source...so much so that we have lost sight of the big picture.
It's like that one red light we always hit on the way home from work or the supermarket -- it becomes our nemesis, we notice it and fume about it when we're sitting in traffic because of it, but when we cruise through on green, it doesn't even register.
Dig deep enough, you'll find trash on all the brands -- I think that Emerson makes some fine production folders.
=)
Allen
aka DumboRAT
