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This weapon, as is, will be exploited. Trust me, this isn't a penalty. Any character with evasion (and the subsequent high reflex save) will eat this for dinner. If you want to impose a penalty to this weapon with the flavor of trying to control a dangerous weapon, consider a -2 penalty to hit, period. The tower shield, another "hard to manipulate" piece of equipment, gives precedence for this.

The critical threat/modifier you have is unbalanced. You don't see critical multipliers similar to this until you get into epic level rules. If you look at similar style weapons (such as the large flail) the 19-20/x2 route is perfectly acceptable. Personally, I would drop the threat range altogether, and go for x4, well within the domain of an 2-handed exotic weapon that could possibly put the big hurt on.

You describe a short-handled spiked flail, in the most basic terms. There is little reason to go so far outside the norms established by similar weapons because of some relatively short spikes.