What do you guys think?

[Shonen]

8th scale is the wrong place to be if you're strapped for cash lol, especially with the monster trucks. Building my 'budget' Revo still cost me $200+ even though all I had to buy was the chassis (steering/skids/body mounts/screw set/transmission), motor and battery. I already had a full set of extras for the wheels/tires, shafts/bulkheads/arms/hexes and the other electronics (aka the most expensive stuff). I realize that the Revo is fairly expensive so far as monster trucks go, but you cannot really expect to have fun with an MT when you know you can't cover the cost of replacement parts.

That's what I think, anyway. There's been many ESC suggestions, but I only have personal experience with the Mamba Monster. It's guaranteed by Castle to work with all 15 and 17 series motors they sell/sold (151x, 152x, 1717).

Another thing to look at if you're still using mechanical brakes is to use an air-based ESC (ie. Phoenix ICE) with PiStix to convert the 1.5ms-neutral signal to 1.0ms zero throttle the air ESC expects. Radio mixing or a servo Y adapter will take care of the braking servo. A good thing about air ESC's is that their BECs are generally stronger, since they have to support several servos at once. For example, the Mamba Monster has a 3A BEC but the Phoenix ICE series I use is 5A, and it can be adjusted up to 7.0v.