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Review > DRCC > Force Edges A & B

Like "Who killed JFK", these holds are surrounded with controversy. When DRCC first put the images for the Force Edges up onto their website we received a phone call about how these particular holds look a lot like some other duo textured holds that are on the market. So with Pandoras box open, the debate over whether DRCC had copied shapes from other companies started. Take a look for yourself:
What holds? Do you know? Do you even care? Thought not :) Read our comments if you'd like to know, because we don't... actually won't talk about the oter company until later :P

When we took a look at the holds side by side, they look very similar in shape but the quality of the hold and DRCC's duo texture is better. The million dollar question is if DRCC copied the design and we say that these holds are similar, there are some minor difference in shape and size, but what DRCC has done is taken an old idea and made it better and it seems like the competition can't keep up.

A while back we did a review for the DRCC Force Edges ESC and DSC, the smaller versions of the Force Edges A and B. The whole line consists of duo textured holds and they are SLICK, so slick that you can see your reflection, we mean how many holds can you groom yourself in:P

The Force Edges are purely a open hand hold. The holds have no friction and when you get the thumb down on the slick part there is a good chance that the ground is the next move you make. Then we tried putting the holds into the corner upside down so we could palm the slick part of the hold thinking that we could wedge ourselves in the corner and keep ourselves of the ground. That ended as a fail (Well I'd like to weigh in here (Noodles) I did stick that move!!). DRCC is a young company and has only been open for business a very short time, but they have done their home work and have damn near perfected the duo textured hold.

These larger Force Edges are mostly slopers but there was one that we received that has a positive edge. We figured that we could haul ourselves off the ground on the 45 degree wall but when you watch the video, that the holds should just stay away from any steep overhanging terrain.

So these holds are not for the kick about climber, the go once a week to the gym to check out the chicks kind of climber. These holds are HARD! Every time we set with the holds (we try to set without any fore running) we looked at the problems with doubt, then fell on our butts trying to get through the sequence. You can't move too dynamically to the holds or you're hand is sure to slip off. So it made for some interesting setting on our part.

What we haven't included in our videos are those few problems that were just un-sendable. With three holds, they fit perfect on the vertical wall and we could get right under the hold and get our weight on them as you need all the friction you can get:) So we moved onto the 30 degree wall.... and that's where it got interesting, but look at Jeremy's face.... he's not having fun on the vertical wall, and what's climbing? It should be fun, it's nice to see him suffer :D

Vertical? Yes! 15 degree over hang? OK!!. 30 degree wall, OK, but be careful with your feet..... 45 degree overhang? Ok? Well, ask yourself this... is your name Ben Moon?

Although they lay flat on the wall, these holds are slopes and any over hanging terrain will increase the difficulty of the holds. We had them up on the vertical wall so we could set long moves. It wasn't the easiest of sequences, we had the holds down low and we got a good ab workout, but after we found what feet to use we got around the problem. The 45 degree wall was a no no, we tried starting low on the holds and their near impossible to pull on! We could make a problem with another set (Force Edge Easy anyone?) with longer moves and the same shapes but slightly more incut will give you a fighting chance!!

These are the kind of holds that will make you work for the move, and even though they're chalked up like no bodies business they still suck chalk off of your hands :) If your foot work is bad then these holds are going to teach you to use your feet as you're going to have little or no hope of hanging them otherwise

These holds are very specific and setters will find that they can set their sequence without much worry about people cheating the moves. You can only use the hold as an open hand slope. They would be a great addition to any gyms boulder wall but may not be suited for a very small home wall.

Versatility: Open handed dual texture slopes / flat edges
Screw Holes: No

First thing that struck us: Colour. Wow. It takes us back to the 60's when love was in the air and tie die was in. Now personally, I'm not into the whole tie die t-shirt fad (if there really ever was one) but when it comes to holds we're not complaining (but matching these holds into a route unless you're taping is going to be hard!!) The quality of he holds are like no other. DRCC has perfected their mix for the dual texture holds and the smooth part of the hold feels like glass.....seriously, there's no other way of describing it. This is so much of a pride point for the DRCC that when the molds that these are poured from stop giving super slick shiny holds they make a new mold so the shapes stay consistent.

The holds could use a screw hole but DRCC sent us the holds with the optional rubber back and the hold didn't spin on us (When I say Us I mean me!). There's nothing to complain about with the build they're solid, we'll see how strong they are when we run our strength tests later on next month

Get out the bong and take a hit, these holds come straight out of the era of free love and great music. The tie die color scheme gives the Force Edges a WOW factor of ten. I've been impressed with the holds coming from the DRCC. The shapes are specific and can be tricky to stick so that climbers will find themselves a little weary when they come up to some of these holds. I've never felt confident on the Force Edges. We've had them set as long moves on the vertical and we had to move dynamically from hold to hold.. it's not very comforting when you know that there is a good chance that you're going to end up on your ass. Bringing in the holds a few bolt holds made it easier.. thou not by much

So on to some controversy. IF the DRCC blatantly ripped off some of Voodoo's design we will never really know, but I've climbed on Voodoo's holds in the gym and they have a wide range of half moon shapes that are just horrible to hold onto but at the same time it'll improve you're climbing. It doesn't surprise me that the DRCC has made half moon shaped holds, they reflect other shapes that they've created in that they specifically force the climbers into a sequence, they're winners in my books (the Force Edges)

OK, I know I'm probably giving the DRCC a little too much praise so I'll talk about what I don't like about the holds (other than falling on my butt!) I found that even on Noodles home wall (which is pretty big) it was hard to tap into the potential of the Force Edges. The shape of the hold wants to you to force your body down low to get all of your weight onto the hold, mind you we did do a pretty good job on one of our traverse. The next test for the FE's is the gym!

• Some of the best dual texture holds you'll ever see
• Any color you want, just ask Led Zeppelin
  

CONS

• Price VS size why the price difference between the two sets? The size isn't that much different!
• These holds suck chalk off of your hands even when covered (Is this a pro??)
• No screw hole
• If your wall is steep (+30 degrees) good luck
  

PRICE
Force Edges A are $29.99 for 2 holds
Force Edges B are $54.99 for 2 holds

Review > So Ill > Gings

Teeth, wolverines, gum line....we had a lot a names for this set of holds from So Ill before we got around to checking the site to find out that they're called the Gingivitis. A set of five jugs, from straight teeth to a crooked Quasimodo smile, the Gingivitis are all nice and big with options to boot. Chance are if you read a climbing magazine you've probably seen the below image:

So teethy... teeth. This what they look like:

So we've had this debate over at CHR headquaters over the pros and cons of novelty shapes. What we've come to agree on is if the hold is functional, who care what it looks like. You've probably seen So Ill's holds at your local gym, and there is always a theme to their shapes no matter how subtle. The Gingivitis are not a subtle shape.

Being big two had jugs, it was easy for us to set routes for a wide range of climbers. The Gingivitis can also be used as pinches, using the gum line as a thumb catch or an individual tooth for a narrow pinch and are easily matched. Now big jugs like these are pretty easy to climb on, and the Gingivitis as jugs are no different. There are no sharp edges and your hand rests comfortably on the hold, so to spice up our lives we set our first problem with the holds set as pinches. The problem started on the vertical wall and progressed onto the 45. Everyone was having a good time with the route until it came to getting onto the 45. The hold on the 45 required a lot of power and it kept spitting us off. So we took our wrenches and turned it 10 degrees wit the same result. So we spun it another 10, then another 10 when finally someone was able to get two hands onto the hold. We're not saying that the holds are impossible to hold as pinches on a 45, they just need you to keep working the move until it becomes second nature, and if we had more time for reviews we would be doing just that.

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Everywhere, and anything. From vertical to roof, from training to competition routes the Gingivitis are diverse enough to find themselves in a multitude of settings. The jug on the holds are at different angles, some have nice easy buckets to hold on where others are almost flat and can barely be classified as jugs. All in all they're pretty straight forward holds and won't leave you guessing, just get a grip and go. Even when we had problems climbing on them on the 45, a stronger climber would have the strength to clamp down and move through the sequence. So jugs or side pulls? They work well as both, underclings are also a hoot on these, what's not so good is a good ol fashioned all points off dyno to some of these holds, if you hit the hold in the wrong place you could find yourself on a gap between the teeth on clinging to one of the canines (your pointy vampire teeth) and hurting yourself, so a well placed hand is your best bet if you're going to jump about on them

OVERALL BUILD
Bright pink

Size: Large

Versatility: Jug or pinch, you decide before bolting the hold onto the wall

Screw Holes: Yes, with the exception of one

Four screw holes for five holds. Huh? Now these holds will spin, hence the screw hole, and every one has spun and when the one with out the screw placement spun we realized that it didn't have a screw hole, the rest did and we'd put screws in them. We're not sure why there isn't a placement on the hold as it's pretty well the same size as the ones that do have the holds.

Ours holds came in pink, bright, bright , pink. Add the shapes style and that makes for an added wow factor on our wall. The holds are sanded flat and are well built, we see tons of So Ill holds at the gym and they are always on the wall, there's been no problems with any of the holds either at CHR HQ or the gym that we're aware of.

On the texture front they are a little rough, they have an almost crystalline feel to them so expect them to be very very grippy. It's the kind of texture that gyms will like as no matter how much chalk gets onto the shapes they will always be OK to hold onto. Cleaning on the other hand takes a little more elbow work as they will take rubber and chalk into all of their little crevices, go grab a brush and get a scrubbing.

EVE
So most h
The Gingivitis from SoIll are.... well.... Teeth!!!! Honestly, if I was the designer, I would have steered clear of the canines, but all and all these novelty holds are actually quite a challenge and not that painful except in very specific angles and situation. After climbing on them, we quickly found out that molars are surprisingly hard to hold on to, but you be the judge! The texture of the hold is standard, and fairly nice, the color is... hmmm... Noticeable? It's as bright as the skirt I made my parents buy me in '88! But then again, 'flash' seems to be a SoIll trademark. I'd assume the Gingivitis to be more appealing to children then experienced climbers but a good setter can still have A LOT of fun with those... I hope they don't get underestimated, cause they both fun in looks and climb.

• Strong as hell
• Good jugs or side pulls

CONS

• Hard to clean you might want to see your dentist :)
• Texture is quie aggresive
  

PRICE
$69 gets you five holds

Review > Atomik > Smooth Edges

It's been a long road, our relationship with Atomik, but overall it's a good one. We had problems with their texture, so they fixed it... and that's no mean feat in itself! Some of their shapes were a little sharp on the digits... so they fixed the shapes, again that's no mean feat. The Smooth Edges are one of their latest offerings, we'll get round to the others in a different review (the other set they didn't want to send to us because of our earlier comments on their other holds!), the edges compromise of 18 shapes at $49.99.... and that includes (indoor) bolts. Now don't call us crazy but that is a pretty cheap price for 18 holds, and we're not talking foot chips here, these are sized as medium on their site... Let's see what they're like!

Straight out of the box they're orange, can't complain about that, we asked for a different color and it's a pretty nice orange too. Good start! All the holds are around the same size, backs are flat and bolts slide through without any problems... OK, so no worries there. The texture... ah the texture... always a tricky one :) Nope textures fine, nice and even, no bobbles, grippy but not too grippy. There must be something wrong with them right? 18 holds AND bolts for $50.

They MUST have scrimped somewhere

Maybe they're using filler and the holds are weak! That'd be it!!! They've got to be easy to snap.
Nope, they're as strong as every one else's holds, the bench proved that

Damn, looks like we have nothing to complain about... or do we!! Aha! Just when you were getting bored we found something... oh yes we did. What is it? Well apart from the shapes being fairly similar to each other in some places we think that there should be more of these shapes, in smaller and larger sizes. If you have a home wall then these are something that you should probably look at, the price point dictates that alone

We've had these all over the wall, from flat to the overhang and there's been no complaints, the only place that they should dwell for us is the 45 as they're just nice enough for simple problems where you're matching your hands and feet. If anything they could be a little easy, but that's because we do climb on the 45 degree wall a lot these days.. we'd go so far to say that most of these holds could be used as system holds, and that's something that Atomik should look at, make opposites of these holds, double up on a few and you've got a pretty nice system wall crimp set.

As the holds weren't really taxing us all that much we started putting foot holds into our traverses and that's where the fun began. We really didn't put all that many feet in so it was starting to get hard, then we decided that there were too many feet and that they were waaay too close together... the end result was some very long moves with some really sketchy feet, if there were feet at all. Chris went one further and almost managed to get the entire route without any feet, but bear in mind that he was horizontal for most of the route and wasn't having an easy time :)
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If you've climbed on a 45 degree wall for any amount of time chances are these holds aren't going to pose any problems for you... if you haven't then you're going to get strong pretty quick, lots of nice simple moves with semi good feet should see you in good stead. If you've got no problem on a 45 stick them on a 60... then you can have a real blast. The holds are just-about-doable on a roof, not all of them mind... but some of them are OK up there for when you're getting horizontal.

There's not really much else to say... the holds are good on the steep stuff, but inversely if you need some beginners routes with some fairly small holds on a vertical or slight overhang then these are good enough to get the job done. We've set easy and super hard with these holds and they've been super fun to climb on.
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Versatility: They're small edges, but do make interesting one handed sidepulls
Screw Holes: No
There isn't much to say about the holds, they're pretty well perfect, if you've got a home wall then you should probably have a set of these; they don't take up space on your wall so you don't have to worry about your wall be clogged with holds. The texture is spot on, sanding is well done and the holds are pretty strong... the holds are just well built and considering the price the term (which will appear a fair amount I think) "bang for your buck" comes up again.

Somehow Atomik have priced 18 holds at what they're charging, god knows how as it includes bolts and if you're in the lower 48 states it includes shipping as well. I do believe that they will be selling a fair few of these sets, it they make not_very_much_money every time they sell a set... but they'll make up for it in the volume of sets sold... hopefully their manufacuring boys are upto the job!


Atomik is slowly moving up the ranks as one of our favorite hold companies out there. These shapes are great and I had a fun time setting with them. There are 18 holds to the set and the hardest part with setting a problem with these holds is incorporating the whole set in the sequence.

If I had anything negative to say about these holds (and this is a long shot) is that they're low profile. Even after I covered the wall with the smooth edges, people had a hard time finding the sequence through the rest of the holds we have set on our wall. And on top of that, the colour that they came in is pretty bright and it blended in with the rest of the holds.

• Cheap as hell
• Finger friendly shapes
• Good for walls upto 45 and 60 if you're strong
  

CONS

• Sucks if you're not in the lower 48 states for shipping :)
  

PRICE
$49.99 for 18 holds, that's $2.77 per hold and that includes bolts

Review > Project Holds > Drop

If you think of drops as being on the small size, like a drop of water, then you're wrong, this hold is huge, gigantic even;

The Drop shape is a nice big slope, well it's a big big shape and therefore a huge slope :) The point of the drop is to be used as an open hand slope the narrow part of the hold can be used as a pinch. The other side (the top) has a small ridge on the back of the slope that allows you to grab it and stick... the rest of the hold? Oooof good luck!All said hold is huge, and has a lot to offer, so we set it up on the 30 degree wall, the hold has a lot of friction, maybe too much, yup we said it... Project have chucked out a hold that we can actually complain about. Compared to Projects normal texture, which is something you can hang on all day, there are some bobbles on this hold that are just plain sharp! It's like the mold is wrong, the texture on 90% of the hold is the same as you'd expect from their normal line and then the one place you're hitting is sharp and a skin ripper; and it's right where you want to be hitting the hold as well. Sure more friction is always good, but in this case it's something that you hit, hold, and then when you leave the hold wonder where all your skins gone to.

At one point we had our forearms on the hold and we didn't want to slip up on that move (Chris: the couple of time that I did, I lost so much skin that I bled. Not cool). The texture is uneven, there are high points in the texture similar to rough and digs into your skin. Otherwise this hold is like nothing else on the market. You can think of this hold as the Boss from Revolution with out the dimples, but with a rougher texture :(

We've had it for a while and have rotated it all around, keeping the same sequence each time and despite the roughness we've managed to work the routes to completion. There are times where people have come over have seen the holds and it's orientation and have said that the move wasn't ever going to be done, we've proved them wrong on most counts and some of the neigh sayers have finished the same route, the look on their faces was one that should be remembered, they enjoyed the moves... but did complain about (guess what) the texture, and that is the one thing that lets this hold down (for now) of being a must have for a gym.

You'd think that a sloper like this would not find itself on steep terrain but there are certain ways to place the Drop so that it manageable on the 45. Its nice that a big shapes like this can be put pretty much anywhere on our wall. You can easily get two hands on the hold with plenty of room to spare and it give you the option of being able to change the difficulty by rotating the hold a few degrees. On our wall the holds been used as an large tow handed undercut on the box, a slope and pinch (and every other rotation of the hold) on the 30 and on the 45 we were just happy to hit and hold onto it.


Versatility: A slope on the 45? Enough said.
Screw Holes: No

We've always liked Project holds. We've worked closely with Charles, even helping out getting the word out in Canada, and they have some of the coolest looking shapes out there. The Drop is no different. A big bright hold is always welcome on the CHR wall, the hold is fun to climb on and it will spark creativity with any setter.

Our praise stops here. Right away we noticed that the texture of the Drop was much coarser. Its uneven and there are high points, kinda like the pebbles that stick out of sandstone. Being a big slope, the friction is comforting when you're on the hold but if you rip off, you're skin will be in for a ripping as well. Another point: no center column. The bolt hole is subjected to a lot of force and it needs to have support. It may or may not brake over time, we need to test that out, but the bolt hole and the area around it will weaken, the column would help relieve any t nut problems you might have from the hold dropping when a lot of weight is put onto it, mind you, placing a set screw into the hold would also do the same thing.

• No centre column on the bolts, for big shapes this helps
• No pre drilled screw hole.
• Put this hold sideways, grab the tail and watch the spin, a screw would stop this
  
• Texture on the Drop is not symmetrical

Now I love Project Holds, hell I stuffed envelopes for a mail out to Canadian gyms, but I still keep my perspective with what we do over here, and Charles respects that, this hold is sub-par to what I expect (and I mean I), I except the texture to be even on a hold, this not with what we got.

Shape wise the hold is amazing, I love what Jim has shaped, and I like that Friksn clothes have sponsored it (hell they replaced a shirt for me when I destroyed it), more company's should do this! By that I mean sponsor a hold and have great customer service.

Jim is one of the unsung heroes of shaping, he's good and there should be more of his stuff on the market look at the Ghouls, Hurricane, Mutations, and Nixons that are on the Project site, the man deserves some higher praise for making the indoor wall scene more bearable. Whether it's his shaping or the molding... I'd expect the Drop be a shit (yes I said shit) site better than it is. I hope it's remolded to iron out the rough spots because it has the makings to be like the Revolution (P)usher Boss) right now it's close for me, real close but so rosette. That's a hard thing to say, considering I'm such a supporter of one man on his own molding and pouring.... seriously. I love the under dog, but can still stay in perspective (See DPM if you think I'm talking crap).

I want more from Project, the Drop is a wonderful shape, but the intermittent texture, no screw hole and no centre bolt shaft makes it sup par in my book. Sorry!

On a separate note, Jim... hey Jim we've not spoken before. Please make smaller versions of these for home walls, medium and large would be kick ass. Thanks in advance :)
Personally, I've never been 100% satisfied with the texture of Project holds (its been said in past reviews), and this hold put me on the unsatisfied side of that debate. In the past, the Project holds always felt rough, but at the end of the session my fingers didn't burn and minus some callous growth, my skin was OK.