stick9

The Tacks line will generally be your most protective shin pad.

Nothing screams hardo like a hacked up cage. Sorry. Any perceived benefit will be trumped by the fact that it's beer league.

@Hillshave you considered using vinyl wrap, similar to what you see on cars, to change up your helmet colors?

Do I get comp'd if I hate it... I'd settle for the difference between the X and a 710. Seems fair

Hope you guys are right. I just bought one off Sideline.

No, I can easily get 3+ years out of a pair of skates.

Same materials as retail and I believe made in the same factory. If those two things are true, how would they last longer than a retail skate? Someone should note. If you go custom, you better like them because there is no returning them after a certain point. The resale value on custom skates is garbage.

Yeah, I've done that a time or two. It works ok.

BOOM! Playing 2-3 nights a week year round I could easily justify the expense. It's about value. The retail offering fit me really well. The question becomes, why pay extra for something I don't need...

So long ago too. That was early in the gen 1 product lifecycle IIRC.

I looked at games played by first rounders once. It was kind of shocking to see how few games these guys played. What was even more shocking was how many GP's were played by 2nd and 3rd rounders from the same drafts.

He said the guy he spoke to at Pure said the edge holders were no longer being made and if wanted to keep using Edge holders he would need to scour the web for some in his size. Which I knew wasn't completely true. I guess that's why it upset me so much.

Trigger or the Pro version of the dial they have now? I know the latter is coming. As a side note. I skate with a guy who broke an Edge holder last week. He brought them to PH to have the holder replaced. They told him that the Edge holders were no longer available and he needed to upgrade to the PowerFly holder and steel. This ending up costing him $260. I gotta say, that's pretty shitty of both Pure Hockey and Bauer.

The question you need to ask yourself, will your average Sparx owner notice the difference, or what percentage of users would actually use it? TBH, Im not sure I would and there are other things I would want before that. Automatic calibration (height and width), an option to profile or 100% maintenance free.

Great post! Spot on with the phone functionality and user data. Personally. I don't think it was intended to replace existing gen 1 or 2 machines.

Great call guys. I never thought of trying a shirt. Funny, I actually have one of the Shock Doctor shirts. I'll give it a try tomorrow night.

So month or so later. I ditched the Ultrasonics for some FT6's. Decent enough piece of gear. They seemed worth the cost. Only downer, they will not stay in place. Of course I keep using them and bang up the other elbow. I'm back to the US's for time being. I'd rather not use those long term. I don't care for the bulk. Im open to buying one more set. Maybe go back to the Tacks or hunt down some Jofa/RBK gear.

That's a sizable leap given the cost, no? Things have become too expensive to simply "try" and there is no reselling a one off custom helmet. Not trying to be a complete downer. Costs are getting insane and I feel like they don't really care.

Golly Gee, thanks for explaining it to me. Here I thought I was going waste a bunch of time commenting on a bunch of stuff I knew nothing about..................

Looks like a 100k Pro...

So I'll be the one who asks... I'm a Sparx owner. What's the benefit to me as a player to go back to a manual sharpening? Not the smoothness and all that blah blah blah. I want someone to tell me the actual on ice benefits gained by going back to having some rando sharpen my skates... I work in product development engineering. Part of my job is doing competitive eval. Measurements are only a portion of the procedure. Once a product is measured. I set them up in a blind A/B, equal environments and situations. Then we bring in people to experience the products and track their feedback. It's 100% about the users feedback. Just because you can measure something doesn't mean you can experience it. If I were doing these tests. I would have given 50 users two sets of steel. One set with a Blackstone hollow (no sauce), the other a Sparx. Same steel, same hollow, same profile...ie completely blind. This was not the case here. I find the entire discussion irrelevant and the data to be incomplete.

No, it's not. A true comparison would be the Blackstone without the fine shine. Or a Sparx with a final pass by hand using the fine shine. It's beyond silly to argue otherwise. End of story.

To add. Of you read thru the site. I think you'll find that no one has ever said a Sparx sharpening is better than a really really good hand sharpening. It is however far more consistent and convenient. I was a Blackstone customer for years and currently own a Sparx. I have never once had a bad sharpening on my Sparx, never. I have however received uneven edges, incorrect hollows, burnt edges and ruined profiles from some very highly regarded hand sharpeners. TBH, I think the market has spoken.

Not a legit A/B IMO. We compared a traditional Sparks Machine home sharpener, to a Blackstone Sharpening using a yellow wheel and fine shine oil for it's final pass.

Haven't we done this before.... Needless to say, I disagree.