[Muenchener]

If I were doing a lot of trad these days (which I'm not, sadly, as I don't live near any) I'd be considering a second set.

[Paul B]

But i might go for the full set some time soon...

Good luck getting hold of them. I've heard that the bottleneck is at the production end!

[ghisino]

I have a question
For the absolutely smallest sizes there doesn't seem to be many options other than c3s, ball nuts and zeros.

Among these three, assuming they all fit equally well, what would ukb'ers prefer to protect fall-able freeclimbing moves?

[ghisino]

Not really from a planning for yos perspective!

It is more backwards thinking after doing a route that needed gear for a really small parallel sided crack - i used what i could borrow but wondered what would have been the theoretical best!

[remus]

I have a question
For the absolutely smallest sizes there doesn't seem to be many options other than c3s, ball nuts and zeros.

Among these three, assuming they all fit equally well, what would ukb'ers prefer to protect fall-able freeclimbing moves?

If we're talking about a headpoint type situation, where you've got a chance to have a fiddle with the gear and see what fits best, then I'd go for the ball nut. They're markedly stronger in the small sizes (8kn for a ball nut below 10mm vs 4-6kn for similarly sized cams) and as shark mentioned it's easy to mess up placing small cams whereas you get a little more room for error with ball nuts.

[Fiend]

Ballnuts are good for the reasons mentioned but need a smooth, parallel and slightly deeper slot. I'd take both them and C3s.

[Paul B]

Mastercam 00s feel far more stable than the C3 00.

Having now handled the totem non-basic I can see how they fit in improbable placements. I may sell my full set of c3s if anyone would be interested.

[SA Chris]

http://www.rockrun.com/metolius-mastercams/ deal on at the moment. Probably still cheaper to get in US though.

[Muenchener]

American forums currently getting worked up about what appears to be failure of a Fixe Alien under low load (bounce testing) due to a manufacturing defect.

Supertopo

Mountainproject

Hopefully a one-off incident and not The Return Of The Curse Of The Alien.

[SamT]

Hmmm - have had a Blue Alien since they came out years ago and along with my brass hb offset 0, its one of my favourite, in extremis and oft used bits of kit.

I'm thinking about a smaller cam..

Went and had a play in a shop recently and it would seem that I'm torn between black Faders/fixe alien, or a Zero Friend 3 (silver), Very similar cam range.

Wondered if anyone has any thoughts.  I'm really not sold on the C3's, C4s or the metolius ones either.

Pity that Totem Basic doesn't seem to come in black.