Carbofast X-TEND Hydro Review
Not too long ago a fellow club member lent me an extender to try out. Its been on the market for quite sometime now but not many people know about it. Its not surprising since I’ve met with a couple of people who could tell me a little about Carbofast. When I say a little I mean just the previous products they had. They mostly had something to say along the lines of a multi rod stabilizer. When I proceeded to say “Oh the extendable ones?” They look at me funny…I’m pretty sure the ones I saw and held were extendable.
Anyway I decided to find out more about Carbofast’s history by emailing them on their website. A very kind person called Rohan took time to email me what he knows about Carbofast’s history. I don’t want to be sued a goon by leaving out details that Mr Rohan took time to share with me, so, here is what I got in my inbox just a few hours later after emailing them (received 11:34 PM!!!):
“
Hey Jason
I am afraid that I don’t have a full history but I can give you an idea of it. I set up Carbofast Direct over a year ago now and we manufacture and sell Carbofast Products.
Carbofast at the moment is a small company and we are solely archery based. We have a close relationship with the clubs around us and with our pro staff. Our products are designed completely with performance in mind, our developement strategy is to get the performance right first and the rest will follow.
The previous history I’m a bit sketchy on but this is to the best of my
knowledge. Carbofast was originally set up in Ireland in the Late 80s as a carbon manufacturer. Archery equipment was only one of its products. The company produced a number of risers, the Setanta, which was a 26 1/2 inch riser. and the Emerald star which was a complete carbon riser, both I think you will agree looking at current trends were well ahead of their time.
The stabilisation was the biggest success with the quadro rods selling in huge quantities.
Since 2001 Carbofast has been solely an archery based company with the products being produced in Holland. There was however little development and the brand started to dwindle, So two years ago I decided to take the company on, all production moved back to Ireland and we introduced new products and started working on research and development to bring carbofast back to life as such.
Hope that is of some help to you.
If you have any more questions please feel free to ask
Rohan
”
Well history lesson aside, we would be looking at the X-tend Hydro from Carbofast today.
This extender is 4.5 inches in length and dare I say pretty heavy in the hand. Its also an inch in diameter therefore giving it a solid chunky feel. I weighed it up on my scale as I understand it seems there are people who are very peculiar about the weight of their stabilizers.
Yup that’s right, at 152.6 grams its almost as heavy as the S3 Long Rod I reviewed. Let me try to put this in to perspective, here if you still can’t get it this is the total weight of my SF SHC + Cavalier V-Bar set up:
That’s right! Its 12.2 grams lighter than the extender and v-bar I currently have.
Don’t let that fool you. As you know when someone has a dilemma about going after the opposite sex that is less pretty or handsome, incidentally both of which is completely a matter of personal choice, friends and family alike would always say the following quote or some variation: Its what’s on the inside that counts.
Sorry no pictures of what actually inside this beefy extender. Firstly its borrowed and secondly, its sealed pretty tight. That’s natural considering the innards of this extender is filled with hydraulic oil as name suggests.Unscientific test confirms this. Haha, well shaking the thing pretty hard you can tell its not just some liquid i.e. water, but actually something that takes a lot of force to move e.g. hydraulic oil
I think this might send the wrong idea to folks thinking about getting one, but for me, I personally cannot say if it works FOR ME without some compromise of the weight of my full setup.
Let me explain myself: My setup always comprised of a 3 inch extender, 30 inch long rod, and two 10 inch side rods, With a combination weights, my set up is pretty much front heavy. If you hold my bow at its pivot point, it tips forward by a lot! I’ve shot with a balanced bow with more weight at side rods but somehow, TO ME, my bow felt heavy but still “jumpy” when I released the string. With a front heavy setup, TO ME, the bow felt lighter than what I’ve just described, but it seems to jump less; traveling just a short bit forward before rotating/rolling forward.
I must be at the maximum of what I can physically carry with my bow arm because the combination of the X-TEND’s weight and the extra 1.5 inch made my set up VERY heavy, While testing it out, I found myself fighting to keep the bow arm from sagging down with all that weight instead of naturally proceeding with my draw.
That’s right my current extender and v-bar is shorter than the entire 4.5 inch the X-TEND is.
For the interest of trying to give a whole and complete review, lol, I still shot with it. The club member who was next to me on the line commented that my bow sounded quieter. I personally could not tell because I was just trying to “feel” the difference. I did however shoot without my front damper and weights on just to see if it works, And I can say it did with a smile (=
I’ll try to explain as simply as possible. I did feel a little vibration left, but that’s because there was no dampener on my long rod. I could see my long rod working overtime, flexing as if there was no tomorrow. But to my surprise that did not correspond to what I was feeling on my bow when I held it immediately after letting it go. As my long rod was still flexing, all I felt was just tiny tremors. Now that’s pretty impressive! Once again my apologies if you have to take my word on it without some quantifiable data. But I’m not talking out of my ass here =D
Well I have returned the X-Tend it to its owner already. Hah, he couldn’t sell this to me although I admitted to him it was an impressive extender. Don’t get me wrong here, unlike the other extenders that’s on the market now, Carbofast X-TEND Hydro stands out because of the liquid innards in its chunky but solid body. As its a heavy extender and dare I say “odd” in length, my advice would be to start building your stabilizer setup around the X-TEND. This is to get the balance you need with your bow without having too heavy a full setup. And yes I am recommending the X-TEND despite the fact that I’m not able to shoot properly with it, but that’s because it looks like I’m shooting at the extreme of what I can hold, mass wise.
Here’s the official product page of the X-TEND HYDRO. Click for the manufacturer’s own product description or to place an order if you’re sold (=
