Fiberbow S3 Longrod.

I must be the luckiest person on earth as of last week. Thanks to a club member who was having a fire sale of his equipments because he has found the right combination of equipment for his setup, I got a S3 long rod for £90 (= Its currently going for £145 here(at the time of writing). Mind you this price is a special offer price.

Here’s my new S3.

Haha! Alright first things first, I should have stated clearly, that this IS a secondhand long rod. And although I know the previous owner of this long rod takes care of his equipment, there are just a couple of dings and dangs on the long rod. For that matter I’m not going to comment on the finishing quality in this post.

On with the pictures

The thing that sets the S3 apart from other long rod out there in the market, is its unique shape. I’m not sure about the technical term for it, but it is triangular in shape. If you look closely in the picture above, you’d notice that there is a peculiar “dent” developing, well that is the start of the triangular shape that I’m talking about.

Yup, as you can clearly see, I need to get the lighting right in order for the shape of the S3 to stand out. But I think you can actually see the rough shape of the two sides shown here.

 

I think you get the idea about its shape. If not check out the S3’s cross section and more scientific data/tests at its official product page here.

When I first got it out of its tube casing, the first thing I noticed is that it felt heavier than my Sebastien Flute HCF long rod. It really didn’t matter then because I just wanted to put it on and start shooting with it too have a feel. More about that later.

After the shoot I went home and weighed it up on my scale. For those who dispute everything in life just to try to make a point, or stand out, or just to be a knobhead, the following picture is for you to see that my scale is more or less accurate.

There, its showing the exact weight of a known quantity. Anyway you can now shoot me down for weighing something like this, I know its not the MOST accurate way of weighing an object of this shape but hey no one’s perfect right?

• I found the balancing point of the S3, the point where it would balance evenly on my index finger, and then placed that point in the middle of my scale. Just like every high school experiment that requires some kind of measure, mass in this case, I repeated this three times, and I got the same reading each time. I also re did all this with my SF HCF long rod.

Ta da! (Wall-E style). My suspicion was right my SF SHC was lighter, by 21.2grams. But considering I shoot a heavy setup anyway, I really couldn’t feel the difference when I have it on my bow. I would say this 21 grams is negligible to me.

 

Now on to million dollar question everyone wants to know; How does it feel?

One word : AWSM!

I really didn’t believe that my setup could get any softer after the shot. Softer as in “dead” in this case my lovely soft/dead set up has become softer/dead-er! After I release, I want to hear THUWMP! while feeling the bow jump forward, as it is rotating I want the limbs and string to stop vibrating ASAP.

Before trying out the S3, I believed my combination of the Inno Carbon and Winex Limbs SF SHC stabilizers gave me exactly the shot reaction I wanted. After trying out the S3, I was truly, truly, truly amazed and happy at the same time. I mean I wouldn’t say that my combination of equipment had any extra vibration. It was minimal. With the S3 there’s less, minimal-er.

I know this is not a proper way to test for residual vibrations, but every time I do a deep hook on the bowstring, usually when I’m tired, I could feel just that extra bit of vibration coming from my limbs. It stops immediately after I put the bottom limb on my shoe. I did a deep hook that night with the S3, and to my surprise, there was no residual vibration! Now this could be a bad thing for me as I normally know I did a deep hook when my limbs vibrate ever so subtly and correct myself on the next shot!

Overall, I am very impressed with this long rod and I can see why its easily one of the most expensive long rods on the market. To mould woven carbon fiber into the S3’s unique shape takes time and effort which adds to the cost. That unique shape in itself must have come from hours and hours of study.

Just like many fascinating things to come from Italy, i.e Ferrari, Lamborghini, Alfa Romeo, Pizza lol, the Italian’s at Fiberbow have poured their passion into designing and producing a fantastically awesome long rod that not only looks great, but works better than anything else I’ve tried so far. I can’t wait for someone to sell me their extenders and side rods from Fiberbow.

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~ by awsmresource on January 25, 2009.