Archery Stabilizers RamRods New Products for 2023 | Setup and Initial Feedback

What's up everyone? We are back at Willow Creek Archery. We are going to go through all of Ramrod's bars and setups for our hunting bows. We've got hunting season right around the corner here. We got the Wraith bars, which is their hunting line of bars. The 8 inch, 10 inch, and 12 inch. We also got their weight system. They have tungsten infused weights. They have tungsten powder in the weights. Their quick disconnect and also their side bracket mounts. What's cool about this year as opposed to years prior, they finally have now a set of brackets and quick disconnects to go along with their bars. So if you guys are like me and you're a completist, you like to have all the same brand for that particular setup. You don't want to have, you know, three or four different manufacturers when it comes to the bars, brackets, weights, all that kind of stuff. So Ryan's bow's here. My bow's here. Getting ready for hunting season. We stripped them off. We have no weights, no stabilizers, no brackets, nothing. We're going to kind of go through all this stuff, assemble it how we want, kind of play with it a little bit, play with the weight, play with the length of the rods, also the angle of the back bar, and then we'll give it a couple shots in the range and see how we like it. Ultimately, we'll be ready to go and set up for hunting season. All right, guys. So with most things, archery preference has a lot to do with it. So everything that we're going to go through in today's video, that's how we personally like our setups. The thing about stabilizers is there's a lot of misconceptions about them. Each bow is going to require a different setup for a stabilizer. It's going to make your shot feel different depending on the geometry of the bow, the length, the axle to axle, the riser configuration, where the stabilizer actually mounts on the bow itself. With that being said, with this PSE Evo XF I have here, one of the features that they have is that there's dual mounts on the front for your front bar. So if I want to run a 10-inch mount or 10-inch bar on the front here right underneath the handle, which most people run just because it's typically where the mounting hole is on a bow, it's just under the handle, you can run a 10-inch bar here or you can run an 8-inch bar here and you're virtually going to get the same exact feel on your shot. Now people shoot either a straight bar or even a down angle bar. Personally, I don't feel any difference when I have either one of those setups on my bow. So I don't think that by dropping down a stabilizer about five inches, it's going to change the feel or the shot for that matter. So if I need to run a shorter bar just because if I'm in real thick stuff, then I'll just go ahead and drop my bar down here. I can actually take down a couple inches and still get the same effect in the end. So today's video, I'm actually going to run a bar underneath the handle because I'm going to be running a little bit longer bar. I think I'm going to go with the 12-inch with the quick disconnect and then I'll start playing with some of the weights and then we'll kind of do some math and figure out what we're going to need for the back bar. So let's go ahead and get the bracket hooked up on this thing. Like I said before, we're going to start with the front quick disconnect. We got our wrench all ready to go. Get this guy snugged in there. All right, that thing's tight. You always want to make sure your quick disconnect mount hole here is facing upwards. It's never a good thing when your stabilizer loosens and then the thing drops because you have it facing down. We're going to get the 12-inch for the front and then the peg that comes with the quick disconnect. Go ahead and give it a couple threads. You don't want to go too far. We're going to go ahead and put this in here. Yeah, it looks nice. All right, so we're not done with the front yet. What we're going to do, we're going to take off these. So Ramrods, they give you three ounces of weight. They give you two flat discs like this and then they give you what's called a blender weight. We'll leave that one on there. We're going to run our four ounces of tungsten on the front. So this is a four ounce tungsten powdered block. So there's actually, if you shake this here, you can actually hear the tungsten powder rattle. I doubt you can pick that up in the camera. But anyways, this is a four ounce blender weight. It's one ounce. So we're going to go ahead and run five here on the front like that. So I'm actually figuring out what weight is going to be preferable for the back. So a quick little calculation, you take the length of your front times it by the weight that you have on the front, which is five. And then you divide it by the length of the back bar that you're going to use. So I'm probably going to use a 10. So if I divide that by 10, it's saying I should use roughly six ounces. So this is pretty much a starting point. Don't go off of this and expect that it's going to be absolutely perfect. You won't really know until you start shooting it. You're probably going to be adding and taking off a couple weights. I particularly like a really heavy bow. My thought process on that is it's hard to move mass quickly. So if there's a little gust of air, or like a breeze, or you have a little bit of a jolt in your shot while you're holding it, that pin isn't going to come off the target. It's going to slowly move. So you have time to get it back on target, or you have time, you're still on target to still make that quality shot. So I'm going to go ahead and add the six ounces on the back. I, for whatever reason, I've found that on my setups, I do like a two to one. So if I have five on the front, I'll probably do like nine or 10 on the back to get that two to one ratio. It seems to always work well with me. But again, I'll shoot it. If I need to take some off, I'll take some off. I need to add some, I'll add some. It's really a feel. You really want that bow to recover when you draw back. You don't want that bow to really wiggle like this. You want that pin to stop moving and to get steady so you can get it on target a lot quicker. And then also you want to feel that, that vibration get taken out with those stabilizers. That's really the main goal. And one of the things I like about these Ramrods too is that they're micro diameter and they're super, super stiff bars. So less wind drift, obviously smaller surface area. And then that back bar is going to run there to counterbalance and offset my quiver and also give me a little bit of a left side bias. So I'm actually working into the bow because you don't want it perfectly level. The problem with a perfectly level bow is that if it's perfectly level, any little bit of movement, outside movement can move that bow left, right, up and down, back and forth. So if you have a little bias one way, you're constantly putting force into the bow to hold it correct, which you're putting force into anything opposite that might want to push the bow any other way. So you want to have a little bit of that bias on there. It just helps hold steadier and makes you a lot better of a shot out at longer distance. All right, now onto the back bar. Ramrods gives you this washer and then these three crush washers right here. You only need to use one. The other two are for backup in case one ever fails or fatigues. In options with the side bar mount, you can either run it behind your quick disconnect in the front to give you a long enough bolt or what I like to do to get it a little bit lower and out of the way of my arm. So when I have my bow like this, if I have my quick disconnect right behind my front bar, it actually tends to hit my arm and it's uncomfortable. So I actually run it down here on this mount at the bottom. It gets the bar out of the way and it gets a little bit lower center of gravity too, which for the back bar, I think it does help a little bit. Again, my opinion, you can run yours however you like. So we're going to go ahead and get this thing bolted on and then we're going to throw on the 10 inch bar with probably nine ounces of weight on the back. All right, so we're going to want to get this thing pretty much level and then centered. I think that's the best starting point. If you need to suck it in tighter to the riser, you can, or if you want to get it further away, you can also. But like I said, it's a good starting point. So now we got that thing tightened down. We're going to go ahead and get our back bar ready to go. I want a little bit more weight on the back. So I'm going to leave the blender on there, take the two ounces off that come with it. I'm going to add this four ounce block here. So that gives us five. We'll see if we have enough. And then two more, six, seven, and then two more, nine ounces. And then also don't forget screw on this peg, just like that. Now comes the trial and error part. So if you notice on these quick disc or this back bar mount, it has all these laser etched marks on there. That helps you once you figure out where you want to go in and out, also up and down. There's some on the backside. I don't know if you can see them. So they have a little indicator knob right here. And as you go, you can kind of, you can get this thing set in whatever degree you want. It helps when you fine tune. When you're out on the range, I won't really know exactly where I want to be until I start shooting long distance, but I'll kind of get this thing set where I think it's going to be. I'll get it set pretty close and then we'll be ready to shoot it. I don't like to set mine, my bar perpendicular to the bow. I actually like to kick it down anywhere from five to 10 degrees. It's a good starting point. Get that tightened up. And then also, that's actually pretty good right there. It's kicked out just a little bit from the bow. So you can see it's not straight up and down or perpendicular to the bow. It's not parallel to my front bar. It's actually kicked down just a little bit. So I think with that, I'm ready to go fling a couple arrows down range and see how she does. One of the reasons why I like the bar, the back bar to be kicked out a little bit from the bow is because when I'm loading an arrow, I don't like to have that back bar jamming into my side. I have it kind of up against my side. That's how I kind of know it's in the right spot when it's just going next to my hip. When I have the bow set on my thigh right here for when I'm loading arrows. I've shot a couple arrows down range. So far, everything seems to be pretty close as far as the degrees up and down, in and out of where I want it. I won't really know for sure until I start shooting 67 to 80 yards because then I'll really start to see what the pin's doing. A little tip, if you notice that you're holding real steady but your pin is bobbing up and down, you know, top and bottom of the spot, but it's not necessarily fatigued, try adding a little bit of weight to the back bar. And then also if you do get the little left and right bobble with your pin, you know, left right side of the spot, then go ahead and add add a weight or two to the front bar. That should help tighten up that little bit of pin float. But so far, as far as these go, definitely feeling super solid adding that little bit extra length out not only the front but the back. The pin is reacting super fast. It's getting it's getting on target real quick. The shake from the initially drawing the bow back is stopping very fast and the thing's holding holding super solid. All right, so I'm going to get my stuff mounted up. Travis obviously already went through his whole setup. The only two differences are I'm running a 10-inch front bar and an 8-inch rear bar where he's running a 12-inch front and a 10-inch rear. I'm also going to start off with a 7-ounce weight in the rear whereas Travis is running a 9-ounce. So I'm going a little lighter. That's what I was running before, so we'll see if I still like that with the lower mounting option. If not, you can always add some more weight. Putting the front bar on. Now the back bar. All right, now let's go shoot. So I'm taking about five shots with it so far and it it feels really good just right off the bat. I think I like that lower mounting option better. It's a minimal difference but for some reason it just it feels a little more comfortable when I have it down here resting on my thigh and when I bring it up it just feels super stable all the way up through the shot. Travis and I both had a chance to put six shots or so downrange and the tungsten weights and the lower mounting position seems to be making a pretty big difference compared to the old setup. So at 20 yards everything was keeping pretty steady and straight but the real test is going to be once we get it outside and shoot out to 80 yards and beyond. That's where we're going to see the biggest difference with aeroflight. So thanks for watching the video. Feel free to let us know if you guys have any feedback in the comments and we will see you in the next one.