I was very fortunate to get my hands on one of the first two sidewinders to make it to Canada, and let me just say, I'm beyond pumped about this machine!!
First off, it's quite small in size, but it's got a great weight to it, not heavy or hard on your hands, but feels nice and balanced. The build quality is unreal, and the wood inlay on the side is really impressive. You definitely feel like you're getting your moneys worth, it's gonna be a bit more then his crankers, but I assure you, well worth every penny. I'm totally over the days of spending $500-$600 on some plastic molded space machine lookin toy, this really retains the "tattoo machine" feel that Dan's been killing.
As far a how it tattoos, two words; LASER BEAM! I do a lot of large scale traditional stuff (using lots of loose 14-18's on torso's and backs) and that's typically when I would bust out my coils, I've never found a rotary that could match a heavy hittin coil's for stuff like that, until now! And due to the nature of the imagery I tattoo, I'm hyper critical when it comes to line quality. This thing packs the lines in quick and effortlessly, you hardly notice you're using a large grouping! I can't get over how fast I can line torso's now, gotta start charging more! I haven't used it for anything smaller then a 9 yet, but I really like my MC's for the small stuff, so I'm totally content. And best of all, it sounds a lot like a coil! Call me old fashioned, but I really like that.
So all in all, I won't hesitate one second to say this machine is a real game changer, I haven't put it down once since I got it, and it actually makes me look forward to lining stuff!