Introduction
The new Sabre Dagger is coming out on 4/5. It has a ton of upgrades over the base dagger. So the question remains though, will the new Sabre dagger be worth it or should you just upgrade a plane jane dagger. As someone who has spent years tinkering with the dagger, I have some opinions, but let’s discuss.
First Impressions
So the new sabre dagger looks incredible. The short clips im layering in are remixed from PSA’s public promo footage for the sabre dagger. I have not held one in my hands yet. Our channel is way to small for that, PSA probably doesn’t even know we exist. But I made this video because when I first heard about the Sabre dagger, it validated quite a bit about the design decisions I made to my own stock dagger. I reviewed my upgraded PSA dagger in detail in another video, but you’ll notice most of what I did for the dagger is extremely similar to what PSA ended up releasing in the Sabre dagger.
So my upgraded dagger is basically the sabre dagger we have at home. My dagger is my favorite gun that I own, so I feature it in a lot of my videos. I know after the release of the sabre dagger, the trolls are going to come in with “why don’t you just buy a sabre dagger ya poor”, but my custom dagger will always be my OG and near and dear to my heart. Even if it becomes outdated in the face of PSA’s new premium offerings.
The New Sabre Dagger has a Nice Threaded Barrel
But lets start front to back. Both daggers have threaded barrels. Mine is the stock PSA dagger threaded barrel, but you’ll notice that mine is a bit worn out than the sabre version. It seems like the Sabre version might be nitrided or have some other nicer coating than what the stock PSA dagger barrels have, which appear to have a phosphate finish if I had to guess. All I know is that the stock dagger barrels show their wear and tear pretty quick, so this seems like a significant upgrade over stock.
The New Sabre Dagger features a premium cut slide
Next lets have a look at the slide. Now mine has an original base dagger FDE slide. Nothing wrong with it. The sabre slide has the cool SABRE branding cut into it and some cool windowed cuts towards the front. You could get a similar effect if you were building a base dagger and just buying one of the windowed cut slides that PSA already offers, but it won’t have that cool sabre roll mark. Most of the slides coming out from PSA are already optics cut, and it appears like the SABRE will have the same or similar ameriglo supressor height sights that are available on many of the dagger slide offerings today.
The New Sabre Dagger has an ultra clean stipple and accelerator cut
The biggest update to the sabre dagger is the frame. The frame appears to be made of the same high quality plastic that is used in the base dagger frame. However, it features new stipple patterns that look really sharp, and they’ve stippled in the accelerator portion of the dagger frame.
I actually ended up doing something very similar with mine, I hand stippled my frame and the accelerator cut. I have a tutorial on this on my channel. Obviously the sabre stipple is much sharper being laser cut. They also kept the finger nub whereas I personally shaved mine off.
Some PSA Sabre Dagger models appear to have custom cerakote jobs
It looks like PSA is going to offer some custom cerkote options, their woodland frame looks so dang cool. I did something similar in that I rattle canned mine, but obviously over time now that shows quite a bit.
The trigger on the new dagger appears to be an aluminum flat faced trigger. I swapped an Overwatch precision flat faced trigger shoe in mine. Their trigger looks quite a bit nicer.
The Sabre Dagger will feature an aluminum magwell and +5 Mag extension
The Sabre Dagger will feature an aluminum magwell. It looks a lot like the plastic magwell I installed from GG Magwells. GG Magwells now makes aluminum magwells, so it may be that their magwell is the same one that ships with the sabre dagger, but I can’t be certain of that.
The sabre dagger also ships with a +5 mag extension. I’m running Glock OEM +2 extensions, so that is a significant upgrade as well.
The only thing it might be missing is a compensator
Okay so the new sabre dagger looks really sick. Its like a much more refined version of the upgrades that I’ve already done on mine. The only upgrade that I’ve done on mine that the sabre dagger doesn’t have is a compensator. I’ve since added a Parker Mountain Machine comp to mine, i have a review videon on this coming out soon, I love this comp. But outside of that, the upgrades are essentially the same, only more refined on the Sabre dagger.
How does it stack up against just upgrading a base dagger?
PSA to my knowledge hasn’t announced how much this thing will cost, so all I can really do is total what I spent upgrading mine to help you make an informed decision on the value. If we say the base RMR dagger is worth $300, let’s say you spend $100 on an new trigger. GG Magwells magwell will cost you around $50. A +5 mag extension from another brand is also about $50. Not including the costs included with stippling your own pistol and the labor of hours spent stippling, You could have an equivalent dagger to what I built for around $500 plus a lot of elbow grease.
And the PSA offering still would have a lot more upgrades than what you would have going the route I did. It has a much nicer slide, a much nicer barrel, a nicer trigger, and a much cleaner stippled grip. I have no idea what PSA is going to end up charging, but I think if they did charge in the $800 range for their base premium sabre dagger, or even a little north of that, it would be worth it and a very attractive price point. Again im just speculating on the price, but at that price point they would still be super competitive with other not a glock premium brands like shadow systems. The PSA dagger is really giving the people what they want here. It’s a gucci not a glock, and depending on the price point they sell these at, its going to be a real contender with what else is on the market.
Conclusion
If you don’t already own a dagger, or if you want an upgraded pistol and haven’t done any work on your base pistol, I think this is going to be a super attractive option.
