UKC

Saw some old DMM aliens for sale, the purple ones with straight axe shafts. Clearly behind the state of the art today, but I am 1) Poor 2) Only climb scottish winter I/III atm. Worth getting at a low-ish price? Did you climb on these in the past? 

I used these in the past, they were strong on design, if not over designed and weak on materials/build quality.

Watch for wobbly heads, the heads were held in with resin and then rivetted, over time the resin would crack and fall out leaving a wobbly head.

The thin rubber grips shredded easily, replace with SA tape.

The soft alloy head got mashed up easily making pick changes difficult.

They are a straight axes, this has its advantages but you WILL wreck your knuckles, they will need wrist loops or very strong forearms to uses leashless.

Finally the big hole in the spike acts as a crampon magnet and does it's best to trip you up when de balling your feet.

I wouldn't buy without careful inspection IE not online. 

They will be good enough for your required use, some of the hardest routes of their era were climbed using them but would have to be very, very cheap to tempt me.

Very good insight thanks. Think I'll give the pair I've been looking at a miss and maybe get some Raptors. 

This.

I had a pair which I converted to leashless using the grivel trigger stuff and properly bruised the bone of my  fingers on steep ice.

There are a lot of decent bent shaft leashless tools out there that are a quantum leap forward from what Aliens will do.