What did you get in your SO PXD15?

[l0ckcr4ck3r]

I've been looking at getting some dimple picks recently and came down to the same 3 choices that most of us can afford... SO, GOSO & Souber. I was initially concerned about what might turn up from the sites like DX, its not easy to negotiate a return or replacement in chinglish. Anyways, while i was trawling the net i watched the review by Alex Blate on SouthOrds PXD15s and saw the following post on this forum:

http://www.lockpicking101.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=55273&hilit=dimple+picks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-hG1MgjUWg

they both seem to have got a random set of picks in the kit!!!

The following photo is from SO's website, i just added the L,R & C next to the tips.... its easy to tell which "sided" the picks are from the highlights and shadows, if you zoom in. You SHOULD get 4 pairs of picks, each in Left & Right formats and a centered flag.



i also marked up the photo cyano138 posted from the thread above, again looking at the shadowing on the paper you can easily tell where the flags are...



I'm just wondering what everyone else got in their kits from SO or for that matter in their GOSO set? was it the correct compliment of picks or just a random selection? Some of you may be asking why its important? well right now i know that a cheap source for MTL locks is Israel and from what i have read it seems that some of the models are pinned on the opposite side. From memory the US have the pins on the right and EMEA ones have them on the left and i guess i want to be able to use my picks on anything. Now for my rant.... It all supposition so dont knock me too hard for saying this, id love to find out that these are isolated events and im going to get what i expect to, if i place the order. The stuff i have already ordered from SO has been great!

I'm just guessing, but whichever far eastern country these are made in, if the factory doesnt have stock of the right tips, they just stick in whatever to make up the numbers and get the order out the door! We all know that the sites like DX offer this set for sub $15 so SO are paying no more than $8-10 wholesale... they then mark them up by 300-400% and push them out the warehouse to us poor folks... the least they could do for that kind of profit is inspect the product before its shipped. I might even be being too generous to SO. If these kits come in a plain cardboard shipping box from SO, then there is a good chance they receive the picks in bulk and make the kits up themselves! again not taking the time to get them right or using whatever is available at the time to fulfill the order.

Now as far as supporting a US company goes... if the SO ones were made here id be all for it but at the end of the day they are not and its not supporting any workers or machine operators over here; the poor guy on the production line in Asia still only gets half a bowl of rice a day. So what is the advantage of spending an extra 25 bucks on the SO kit? well i guess it $5-7 less of an increase on our 38.8 billion trade deficit.

So post what you got in your various dimple kits and maybe we can find a supplier that sends a complete kit. BTW does anyone know of a cheap source of the souber picks, either here or in the UK? the best i have found is from canada, about $80 all in:



thanks

[fgarci03]

Hey!

Good question you asked there. I can't tell you for sure, I don't have my picks with me right now. But I had several of each, that's for sure. In fact, I use mainly the center flag, only on weird keyways I change it.
I don't believe they all will come for the same side. It would be a huge mistake from them. But again, I can't vouch for that.

About buyin from SO or not, well... I got mine from SO and I don't regret it. I really like them. But Solomon (a member here) vouches for the DX kit. They are the same and the price difference is very different. He is has many more experience than me and he likes them, so I guess that's enought for us, common mortals.

Oh and the GOSO one (sold in DX) comes with a box. The SO one doesn't!
Hope you work it out!II had a whole lot of doubts prior to buying mine too!

[ARF-GEF]

I have the goso and I am satisfied with it.
I see minor differences in the quality of workmanship, but otherwise it is good.
I had no possibility to compare it to a real lie Southord so I just based it on my Goso and pics od vids of the SO.
It would be interesting to hear someone who either owns or has experience with both of them

[MrAnybody]

SO PXD15 here: 3 left, 3 right and 3 centre flags. good kit.

However, I did end up tweaking them a little by sanding off the square edges on the shafts. God only knows why SO choose to have the shafts with squared edges.

[Solomon]

Goso set here. It came with 5 left and 5 right, one of which in each orientation is curved. There are 2 centre; one is flat and the other has a thinner flag protruding from the middle of the shaft.

There are also 2 with the paddle handles. One is the weird double sided thing and the other was a single curved flag. I actually snapped the paddle handle off that one and put it in a pin vise but it's gone walkies so I'm not sure how different it was to the others. Pretty sure it was right orientation though cos I was using it for the cisa astral S.

[l0ckcr4ck3r]

Thanks for the info guys, it looks like you just have to take a chance and see what comes..... I ended up ordering this kit for $25 really because i didnt want to wait a month for shipping from china and they are on sale right now

http://www.knife-kingdom.com/GOSO-KABA-Deluxe-Lock-Picking-Set-GOSODeluxe.htm?categoryId=-1

If it turns out to be junk, ill invest in the soubers

[l0ckcr4ck3r]

Just as an update, i received my GOSO picks from Knife Kingdom last week. They are basically the quality i was expecting but the good news is at least they all seem to be correct. There are 5 sets that have both left and right varients and 2 centered flag picks. one is just tapered and the other has a small flag centered on the shaft. I wont post all the photos here, but have a look around my Photobucket to see the rest if you're interested. This is what you get....




And some close ups of the paddled ones...

centered Flags...

Curved Picks...

"Z" Profile...

Wide Flag... Shank .053"

Wide Flag with Narrow Shank.... .043"

Narrow Flag


They need some work before they are gunna be useful, but i have some ideas that ill work on. I now get what MrAnybody means... the sguare profile of the shafts is a really dumb idea, they really dont fit in my Kaba or MTLs at the moment!!

[mastersmith]

My understanding of Left vs. Right is whether it is standard commercial or restricted keyway. By isolating restricted keyways to one side, there is less chance of duplication. Which obviously increases key control.

[Solomon]

They need some work before they are gunna be useful, but i have some ideas that ill work on. I now get what MrAnybody means... the sguare profile of the shafts is a really dumb idea, they really dont fit in my Kaba or MTLs at the moment!!

How so? I've picked my fair share of MTLs with my goso set and they did the job just fine. And you'll find plenty of videos on youtube of pretty much all models of MTL being opened with them. I'm interested to know why you think the square flag is a bad idea, I've never had an issue with that. Keep us posted if you modify some and let us know how you got on, would be cool to see cos those pics are great quality.

As for kaba, I can't see any reason why they wouldn't work... I have a kaba 20 which I haven't managed to (and may never) pick, but I'd put that down to my skills rather than the picks.

[ARF-GEF]

Though I cannot know what he and MrA had in mind I found the square profile can be more restrictive that a rouded shaft for the picks
At lest that is what I found.
If I were as good picker as Sol is probably it wouldn't bother me either

[phrygianradar]

I got the Southord set of dimple picks and have been really happy with them. I got all the correct picks (what is shown in the pictures), so nothing weird or all left orientation picks, etc. I am not sure why they have square shafts but I haven't had any problems because of it. It might be to help the picks keep their shape better(?), not really sure. I have been able to pick MTL interactive's, Kaba Gemini's, Kaba 8... no problems. I personally don't feel the picks are designed poorly because they have square shafts; they actually feel nice and sturdy to me, so I am less afraid to break a pick. But while I am on the subject of breaking picks, does anybody know if these dimple picks are sold separately or do you have to buy a whole set? Like most, I think, I use the center flag the most by a large margin, so if I do break a pick, it will most likely be that one. It would be nice to know that I could just by another one of those if I needed to.

If anybody has found that rounding the edges off really helps, I would be interested to hear about it.

[fgarci03]

MrAnybody did round them up and says it's very sturdy anyway!
Let's wait for him to chime in and tell us about it


For MTL's it's not a problem, as it's not very restricted. But it gets a problem when you find stuff like this:


Or it's just me who still didn't get the hang of it

[GWiens2001]

Picked it yet, fgarci03? It looks to be difficult, especially with those two wards right next to the pins, leaving the middle of the keyway only.

Gordon

[fgarci03]

Still not. The lock doesnt seem to be difficult per-se, but the warding gives me hell.

Gotta try harder!

[MrAnybody]

MrAnybody did round them up and says it's very sturdy anyway!
Let's wait for him to chime in and tell us about it

Ar-ha, just found a mention of me here. So, I'll drop by and explain: The thing I'd done to my SO set is to round off the squared edges of the shafts, but the actual flags remain the same. While most dimples are fine with the picks as they are, I ended up rounding them when I got a Abus EC75. A tiny little fecker with a keyway to match. The Azbe show by fg looks to me like a similar example.

Another reason I chose to round them off is that the I also like the rounded handle that lends itself to a rotational motion to set the pins. I found the rounding off of the squared edges on the shafts was also useful to that. The actual metal taken off them is really minimal, and I find the tweak to be logical in this case. That's why I find it difficult to understand why SO chose to design the set with squared edged shafts.

I got the impression from Sol's post that he was thinking that the change was made to the flags of the picks. In my case, the flags remained the same, and I find no reason to alter them.

I personally don't find any negative to rounding off the shafts it, and I'm really happy I went ahead and sanded them. But saying that, of course it's a personal preference rather than an essential thing to do, and the out-of-the-box picks work really well on the majority of dimples I've tried them on (with or without any change to them).