Old risers never die..........or do they?

greysides

The Hoyt GM was in production for a very long time...25 years?..and only in the last two years has ceased production.

Where are all the other olympic class risers from the intervening years?

Do they just stop making them rather than let them fall down the hierarcy and become more affordable? Why not?

Or did the Samick Agulla once see the 'world stage'?

Aryzel

Most of this is conjecture by me, but seems to make sense. Most of the companies have an Entry, Medium and High end riser, there are exceptions and grey areas but it holds as a rough guide. In terms of performance there isn't major differences between any of the risers, entry to high end. The main difference is visual design. The companies only sell so many risers, its not really an expanding industry, so they only have so many machines making risers. Say they have 4 machines do their Entry Riser, 2 doing their intermediate and 2 doing their high end riser (numbers are made up, just describing proportions).

The Entry riser sells fine, its visualy on the same level as the entry risers of other companies. There is no real incentive to change the entry lvl riser, changing over the machines to a new design costs money, and they might get some market share from the entry risers of other companies, they will probably also lose sales of their own higher end risers. If the entry and intermiate risers seem exactly the same, then sales of the intermediate riser can collapse.

So what companies do, is keep the Entry riser the same, only changing it every 10 years or so, when market share starts to drop from other companies updating their entry riser. Then the companies focuses on developing new highend risers, coming out with a new one every 2 years or so, moving the previous highend to be an intermediate riser. Basically doing what car companies do, come out with a new model every 2 years and shout at people that the 'NEW' model is out and you absolutely must get it!!! And keep shouting until enough people believe it :P The reason Hoyt kept the GM as its entry riser for so long was that, its reputation from the 70s, allowed it to keep its market share against the new entry level risers for along time. Its only recently that its reputation was no longer enough to hold off the prettier designs from other companies. There are too many different risers now, each company changing its top end risers every couple of years, so no riser will be around long enough to build such a repuation again.

The reason high end risers don't end up as entry level risers, is the usual reason, MONEY. Bare in mind I don't mean that in a bad way, if I was running one of those companies I'd do the same thing, this is their business model and it works.

Carebear11

There are exceptions to this, look at the Matrix and Aerotec they never became "entry level" before manufacturing stopped. Where as the Gold Medalist was a top end riser used to win world championships etc, I dont know if it was ever intended to be "entry level", I think people just saw it that way as Hoyt brought out new risers.

Another bow to look at is the W&W Winact, the latest generation of Winact is W&W mid level bow but back in the the year 2000 Korean Yun Mi Jin used the older generation of Winact to win gold in the Olympics.

Aryzel

Carebear I think the point was, the high-end stuff like the Matrix, Aerotec do not become entry level. At most they move from high-end to intermediate and are then discontinued. Its not in the companies interests to move high-end stuff all the way down to entry level, it would end up killing the sales of their high, intermediate risers. Already there is no major difference in performance, the differences are in looks, marketing and price.

The definition of entry level is admittedly vague, its mainly a combination of perception and price. The performance of the risers is a non factor, pretty much every ILF riser made in the last 20 years is easily capable of shooting 1350+ Fita's. The GM used to be standard at world championships, but was definitely the entry level hoyt riser in the last 10 years, based on its price and how it was marketed. Its price was higher than the entry level risers from other companies but it had a reputation via word of mouth that led people to pay that little be more for.

For the Winact, back in 2000, it was set as high-intermediate, or low-high-end, depending on your point of view, very close to the Exfeel which was the top of the line W&W riser at the time. All these risers are easily capable of winning the Olympics, even today. There is no surprise that you sometimes see a slightly older model still being used at big competitions. Indeed there were a good few top ladies using the Samick Athlete several years after Samick had come out with their Masters riser, although that may be in part because the first version of the Masters was slightly heavy (1400g, compared to a more typical 1250-1300g). The point remains that those archers were still equally competitive with archers using risers 4-5 years newer. The development of new risers over the last 10 years or so, has primarily being driven to increase sales to normal club archers like you and me. Not to improve performance for top level archers.

After getting a riser that they like, the two things an archer can get that might give some improvement in performance (not much, but some), would be a set of the newer limbs, new limbs from the last 3-5 years are a bit better than the older limbs from 7-10 years ago, not massively, but a little better. Also some of the top end arrows can be good also, moving recently to light weight ACE's has really boosted my sightmarks, allowing me to be alot more comfortable shooting 70/90m. Again neither limbs or arrows are going to see your scores jump, but do help alittle, certainly alot more than changing from a €100 riser to a €600 riser.

Anyways, I think I've started rambling off topic. Just to say that the price difference in risers is not a reflection of their performance differences.

Aryzel

To give an example from what bows I've had, some I've loved, some I've hated, but regardless I never noticed any difference in performance.

Yamaha - can't remember the model, was an old silver club riser, probably still knocking around UCD, loved it.
Carbofast - (Emerald Star i think) - My first bow of my own, felt great, was stolen after 2-3 months, still kick myself for not being more careful.
Hoyt GM - Had problems with the threads for the longrod, ended up hating it, got it fixed and sold it on.
W&W Winact (the old design) - Gorgeous white riser, should have never sold it, but I started working and got caught up in the whole world of "I have money! Must buy shiny new things!"
W&W NX - Alright, shots fine, but never really connected with it, money can't buy you happiness after all. Currently for sale :P
Samick Masters - This was the bow I wanted to get when I first saw it come out years ago, really love it, have hopefully learnt from the past, and currently only intend to get a new riser when this one breaks.

Again there was NO differences in performance between any of these risers, the only differences were my perceptions of how happy I was with riser. Lesson to be learnt, find a riser you enjoy and stick with it.

Private Ryan

That solves part of the mystery, the Yamaha limbs are still there as well! What age do you think it is?

Aryzel

Well i was using it in 1999, and it had a fair bit of wear and tear back then. The previous peak in the club was around 1994, so my guess would be that it was bought around then, so easily 15 years now.