this one!! Review > Rockwerx > Sandstone Big Ribs

Big pinch or finger jugs, its your choice when it come to the Big Ribs from Rockwex. When Noodles first told me that we were getting holds from them I said "who?" and went onto the computer for a little research. With its head office now residing in Massachusettes, Rockwerx started its humble beginnings in Cort Gariepy's garage in California, the company has grown to involve itself in all streams of indoor climbing. As for their holds you might ask, these ones are BIG with craters in the pockets where you can find and fine tune your hand placement with the options between pinch, finger jug and crimps.

Rockwerx sent us samples from their line and I wasn't around when they arrived so Jacky and Noodles were the first ones to set with them. Once on the wall these holds will stand out for their size and color (they sent us our holds in a deep orange). When I came in and saw the Big Ribs going up the 45, my first impression was that it would be easy enough to get up, but they are more difficult to hold than you expect. The craters in the pockets of the holds make it hard to get a good grip and I didn't feel solid on some of the moves (Noodles accuses me of cheating at the end because of the bump, but I didn't feel like I could lock off on that last hold). The pockets on the holds are shallow and when we flipped them around and used them as finger jugs the craters acted like crimps inside the pocket much like features you'll find on real sandstone. The craters again left me second guessing my placement and praying that my grip would hold. Our next step was to make things interesting by setting a problem with a roof section:

Its obvious when looking at the holds that they are meant to be used as pinches or finger pockets but when I got onto the front face of the box I found that the best grip was to crimp like hell, and then go for the roof moves; the first roof route was easily dispatched, the second route was a different case altogether; to say we spent a lot of time hitting the floor is an understatement, most of the holds are more than OK for roof-pinches except one that is just so hard to hold onto that it's almost impossible to grip :(

After the last review (DRCC Setters Delight which are small and crimpy) I was glad to be climbing on some bigger holds and even though my fingers still feel a little sore, the crimps felt comfortable and personally I would go as far as saying that I felt the most solid with this grip. Since the sequence was sent within minutes of the set we pushed the bar up and put them on the roof. It takes some brute force to prevent yourself from falling and Noodles was convinced that he could hang on two pinches to get his feet around to the other side of the wall, but first we needed to figure out how to get through the first section of the problem. With some classic falls (courtesy of yours truly) Noodles used a hook to get himself across the roof, which meant we had to move some lights to allow him to hit the edge.

So we finally figured out the beta for roof and the holds are deceptive once again. We set a route straight up the box. On a vertical wall we could use the holds as jugs and now that we weren't trying to pinch them the holds are quite comfortable.

All in all, good holds aimed for the more advanced climber but still having great applications for the novice climber if set on vertical terrain or shallow overhangs

Roof anybody? I definitely would not recommend that you put these holds on the roof, but if you're don't mind falling on your ass (or seeing your friends fall) you'll have fun trying to figure out the beta. Rockwerx doesn't give any recommendations on wall angles on their website and leaves it up to the climbers imagination to find the best place to set the holds. The novice and advanced climbers will find good use of the holds however I find that the unsymmetrical design of the holds lends itself to more experienced climbing. To a novice or beginner climber the holds are finger jugs or pinches, but for experienced climbers and setters you can see all the different sequences that can be made with the holds, the pockets on either side of the holds vary in depth (some of them being near to non existing, the best description would be thumb catches) and you could set some tricky weight shifts if you set the holds up vertically.



Not many people have heard about Rockwerx, I only found them because Steve from Holdz dropped me a line a while back that he'd done some shaping for them, so that whetted my curiosity to see what their holds were like. The set we're looking at this week isn't actually one of Steve's sets, but they're interesting none the less.

Now, as some of you may know I'm from the Uk; Essex infact, and that means the only rock that's close to me other than coastal cliffs is sandstone and I've spent a great deal of time hiding in the forest slipping off of sandy holds! With that important segway done and dusted lets look at the Sandstone Big Ribs!For someone that is primarily a wall builder Rockwerx seem to have a nice compliment of shapes for when their walls open, and that means they seem to take pride in their holds as much as their main business, that's a nice thing to see as sometimes wall builders see holds as a side line and they don't pay much TLC to what they're churning out (No I'm not pointing the finger at anyone in particular), seeing these shapes for the first time you're going to think that they're resin and someone is pulling the wall over your eyes, or that the Rockwerx website is wrong, that's what I thought so I dropped them a mail to check and it is urethane, pure and simple. With that little worry out of the way we spent a bunch of time setting routes for people to fall off of, and that's what they did on the 45 wall until they figured out how to hold a couple of the holds, infact that's what people did on most of the routes that were set, but once you get your brain dialed into the holds you can hit them with confidence everytime. I wouldn't say this is a bad thing, it's good for people to not be able to grab and then haul on all of the holds they see, Chris is saying in the main body of the review that he'd see these holds for more intermediate climbers, this I disagree with, I think that having a 5.8 with large challenging holds will teach people different hand positions and body positions. I'm impressed with the Big Ribs, they're not something you'll see every day and I've been on sandstone enough to know that these holds feel like a non-sandy version of sandstone rock, but I've never seen any shapes like this on rock... but they do feel and look like sandstone. Rockwerx is maybe a company you should look at, see what they have that you like, we've got more reviews coming in the future, and there are some shapes that I know Chris and Jacky are going to complain about... stay tuned :)
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Let's start with the obvious. How do they look? Well good enough to be considered average and above. That is for a guy who would not want his wall to be some form of modern art but rather something that looks and feels like the rock that I'm missing.

How do they feel? Weird, as I first thought that they would rip my skin apart and force me to carry a chalk bag... like I can hold on long enough to justify it :) (Editor: They do suck chalk off of your hands thou!) Anyways bottom line is that I was completely wrong and that they ended up being very comfortable and harmless

Now the best part: testing the route that I have set (read: follow the unpleasant path that I thought would be a cool warm up) Things to know: I didn't use the roof as I don't feel strong enough to play the monkey (I'm more in the fat gorilla range!) and no 45 degree for no particular reason. I am commenting on a traverse that was surprisingly not that bad BECAUSE of these holds. The grip was really good and with a certain degree of complexity which is usually not a default feature to every climbing hold. And what do I think is their best feature, they're amazingly versatile, offering a wide range of fun (for an intermediate - top rope not boulder type of climber)

Would I buy them? Hell yeah for the versatility as they suit a style of climbing that I really like. I would actually consider giving them the editors choice, golden monkey thing... if there was one. Hummm, Noodles!

href="http://vimeo.com/3275758">LT11 Presents - Project Holds!
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Review > DRCC > Setters Delight

Between running gyms down in Michigan and mixing tracks for our videos, Vince and his brother Nick somehow found time to start up the Detroit Rock Climbing Company. We've done some reviews for these guys in the past and it took them some time to get the buisiness off the ground, but with a little pursuasion on Noodles part we were the first in Canada to get our hands onto some sweet, sweet holds, since their start less than a year ago they've shipped holds all over the WorldThe holds that we reviewed back in November were the BFD slopers (review here) and this time around we have cirmpy purple edges that they've named the Setters Delight. And here's what the website says about these holds:

"Setters find these holds absolutely D-lightful! These low profile positive omnidirectional crimps make creating and forcing sequences a breeze. If setting is your job than these are an excellent tool to have in you bag! Fit for everything from 5.9s to 5.14s. "

You won't have much to work with when you're climbing on them, making them great for setting those forced sequences, as they suggest.. The area that you're going to grab are pretty flat edges, they're not incut at all, so we set to work to see what we could do with them. We set them on the 45 and we barely got ourselves off the floor, even when we switched the slighly more possitive holds on the start we still couldn't get past the first couple of moves. So one thing about these holds: crimp strength is a must, but you can get a thumb catch on the little lips that are on the holds if you really bear down on them.... we failed on the 45, not managing to get past three moves, the holds just aren't incut enough for us to be able to stick and then move from them :(

We ended up giving the set to Eve in hopes that she would be a little less naive and set a sequence that we could actuallly get around. Despite being on a vertical wall the holds still posed a challenge in that you're never quite sure when you're going to pop off the holds, with a little work we all completed the problem.

After we'd all run a bunch of laps on the holds we gave the holds to Jackie; we've learnt in the past Jackie sets like a loon! Because of the nature of these holds the start of Jackies problem forced us to either bump to the next hold or cross over statically. As you can see from the video, the bump takes acertain amount of commitment and after seeing Noodles fail a few times I figured the best was to cross to the next hold. The move itself requires your crimp strength, balance and the weight shift needs to be just right making these holds a Setters Delight (I couldn't have put it better any other way), Jackie set something that made us all work to get the send, with him being taller and having a longer reach he did have trouble on his own problem (something we always like to see), during the session we were filming but we also had a photographer over taking some pictures for the site, keep you eyes pealed as we'll get these images up as soon as we get them.

Overall the holds are fun to play on, they're not painful and really not suited to steep overhung terrain, but if you're looking for some holds that are flat that are big enough to match on for that crimpy traverse you've been wanting to set we'd suggest these.


We'd not suggest going past 30 degrees with these holds, if they were a little more incut then you could probably crank the angle up some more.
As the holds are flat, with varying widths for your hands you will find that forcing moves will be very easy, from side pulls to gnarly cross over reaches you can set some really technical routes, the difficulty will be determined by what you want to do. Noodles wanted to work on some fairly low-wide traverses on these holds, Jackie wanted to set a cross and Eve wanted to play with the holds on our box feature. We all set with them and some interesting routes came out of the sessions, as we've had the holds for a while we've had them all over the place, shallow angles are where these holds shine, pitching the strongest climbers we've had over onto the mats as they try to figure out how to balance on the moves and pull through

Overall, the holds aren't sharp, but some people might find the edges even though they are rounded might dig in a little, but this depends upon how hard you're cranking down on the holds and what angle of attack you approach the holds at. Hitting them at speed is a little trickier than you might expect as you're going to need to be exact on where you hit them, otherwise you're coming off the wall backwards, you can see Noodles and Jackie getting spat off as they try to deadpoint one of the larger holds from the set when it was on the 30 degree wall.

We had the most fun on these holds on the 30 degree and vertical walls, but don't count these holds out for thin undercuts, they work well and you can really force a climber to have to lock onto the hold and then work their way up to the next hold. If pretty thin is your game, then the Setters Delight will fit nicely into you arsenal





Eve and Noodles found that the edges bite and are a little painful to climb on but I didn't have an issue with that (then again, I like crimps so I may not be the best person to comment on the subject). EVE
Setters Delight....sounds to me like climbers hell! But although these holds will leave you panting they are not that bad! They are crimps and I found myself having to tape because they eventually hurt my fingers, I'm glad we didn't have more, a longer route might have been painful. They are fairly soft on the skin though, the corners are nicely rounded and the color is bright and very noticeable on a wall. I set with them and they are fun because you can make climbers do funky moves with these, although rotating them might not be the most practical thing ever! I don't think beginners would appreciate these holds....unless you're the one setting ;) Setters Delight allows one to push their crimping and weight shifting ability to the limit, no matter your skill and therefore can quickly leave you on the mats. I will definitely get on them again....didn't finish Jacky's route and I can't let him have that!

EVE
At first sight I didn't find that I was particularly attracted to these holds, I'd seen them on the wall two weeks before (Strange as they've been on the wall for 3 months!: Noodles) but I'd never tried them, almost because they look tiny and I wasn't sure where I wanted to hold onto them
That was just me not going near them, this week I had no choice to to climb on them as Noodles / Eve and Chris were all going to set routes that we were all going to climb.

The traverse that Eve set was kind of a warm up... and I was surprised by the holds and the fact that they're easy to stick onto, but due to the shapes they all look and feel pretty similar! But if they're on a slight overhang or vertical wall they feel bigger than they actually are.

When we had these on the 45 wall over the holidays I don't remember anyone actually getting anywhere near the route, maybe just a couple of moves and that was it. When I set on the 30 degree wall we found the true potential / limit of the holds as we started falling off becuase of the movements involved, some of the holds are big enough to match, some aren't. The route was getting hit quite a lot so the starting holds and the hold you see Noodles trying to hit were getting really chalky and slick, but with a quick brush they came back to being nice to hold again.

I'm wondering after climbing on them if I'd recommend them for gym use, home walls; sure. I think they'll be good for competition climbing and if you really want to work on hanging flat edges. Noodles is going to move the holds around some more for me so I can play with them, as I'm really undecided upon this point!

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ent prs-medium imperfect cobbles

Entre Prises is a company founded in France and made their debut making the first resin holds on the commercially marketed holds waaaay back in 1983. They quickly moved onto buiding modular walls and have since been building, inovating and being on the forefront of climbing wall projects.

What best describes the Imperfect Cobbles are doorknobs with a huge chip on their shoulder, so huge that they leave holes in your fingers. The chips on the holds give each hold a different feel with some being slopey while others have more of an edge on them.

So we were under the impression that the chipped side side (when we say chipped we mean the flatter in built imperfect side) would be the best way of grabbing onto the holds. So to the wall to test our theory! Our first problem was set on the 30 degree wall with the chips side up. Although Seb and Eve needed a few attempts to get around the climb, we found that we were able to get the send with less effort than expectected. In order to test our theory and complete this experiment we kept the route as is and we flipped all the holds 180 degrees and the conclusion is they're better the wrong way up. There are two reasons for this: 1: The real rock texture is rough and it hurts, 2: the rest of the hold make awesome pinches. With the chipped side facing up like we originally set it forces you to use that part of the hold for your grip and doesn't leave much room for error. Some of the holds have a negative angle and it makes it tricky to bear your weight on them without falling off. When we put them up the other way it was much easier to hang on and figure out what foot holds to use.

The chipped side on the holds are made with a different texture then the rest of the hold and are quite sharp. Noodles pointed out that his fingers burned after the session but despite a little redness my fingers didn't burn, the holds have a more airated look and feel than most resin holds we've come across. The next day was a different story, in the morning my fingers were feeling the burn from the holds, the texture of the chips have little ridges in on them like you would find on real rock and like real rock if you're repeatetly falling of holds your fingers will feel the pain.



Now our suggested uses and what the Entreprise website say are a little different on the angles... we'd have a go on these (and we did) upto and
including 45 degrees... the symbol on the left is what they suggest, if you hover your cursor over the symbol you can read this "Most difficult on overhang wall. Fine-tuned for expert routes and boulder problems. Recommended for training, cruxes and comp routes"... we agree with the boulder problems, training... well they're a little rough (Entre Prise went for a real rock feel) but your skin won't get completely beat up (The digits will hurt thou) and of course cruxes and comp routes; what we disagree with is the angle, 105 to 135 is some seriously steep terrain and unless you can do one are pull ups whilst pinching you're going to be out of luck.
tate the holds depends on what you get, becuase of the imbuilt imperfect sides you can have a flat edge, or turn the hold 180 you'll have a slope / pinch to grab onto!!




EVE
Entre Prise's "Imperfect Cobbles" might not be perfect but they're certainly not bad in my opinion. The texture is amazing, it sticks like velcro and yet it's not to rough on the hands. They seem to be meant to be set in a given direction though, they all have one smooth round side and one side that seems to have been cut off with a rusty knive...that's the side that's gold and when they're set with the slopey side up, gravity just ain't your friend no more, these holds certainly remind you what your finger strength is like these days.

In other words, the same route can vary in difficulty just by turning the holds around which is a nice asset! Color? Well red is red now ain't it! Also, I didn't play on the 45 with these and I'm thankfull. Personally, I'd put them on a route between crux's. The Cobbles can be nice if you can put your whole weight on them, they could be used as a nice break although they can be a pain in the....wrist! ;)

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