Reddit reviews ARCHON Wall Mount Commercial Ball Bearing Cable Station | 17 Position Adjustable Dual Pulleys | Home Gym Equipment | Cable Crossover Machine | Weight Machine | Cable Pulldown | Functional Trainer
We found 3 Reddit comments about ARCHON Wall Mount Commercial Ball Bearing Cable Station | 17 Position Adjustable Dual Pulleys | Home Gym Equipment | Cable Crossover Machine | Weight Machine | Cable Pulldown | Functional Trainer. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
⚙️ x4 Linear Ball Bearing Plate Carriage: Engineering that reduces friction on solid steel rods.💪 Dual swivel pulley station: 17 Vertical positions providing bilateral and unilateral training.⚙️ Vertical upper and lower wall mount: Ability to mount to one stud. Ability to floor mount bottom bracket if there is baseboard interference. Top mount must still be used. (Wood and Concrete Mounting Hardware Included)🏋️ Fitness Equipment for Home Gym: Connect your favorite cable machine attachments or purchase ARCHON Accessory Kits.👍 Home gym set includes 2 commercial handles. Weight plate rack holds 1" and 2" Olympic Plates
Neither. Get an Archon wall-mounted cable station (link) with a few cheap Gold’s Gym Olympic weights from Walmart.
This thing is infinitely extensible and takes two square feet. You can work arms, legs, back, abs. You can add more weights, a lat bar, a bench, squat bars, curl bars, and on and on. Dumbbells are an expensive dead end.
>however, what I'm seeing is that all these machines have a fixed top pulley, which would be an issue for doing cable crunches & tricep extensions.
It shouldn't. I've done both on countless machines with a fixed top pulley. My hi/low pulley machine is fixed and I can do both on it them just fine. Just use a length of chain (about 18" is pretty versatile) and adjust it by connecting it at different links along the chain (e.g., maybe you only need/want 12" of chain extension rather than the full 18"). They also make "ab straps" of various lengths for that purpose. You probably wouldn't need to make any adjustments at all for pushdowns. But if you did, again, just use a short portion of your chain to adjust the range of motion.
I've got no personal experience with them, but I've seen some people praise/recommend the Archon units recently:
https://www.amazon.com/ARCHON-Mount-Bearing-Cable-Station/dp/B075X5BPNT/
https://youtu.be/DSzqkbxdS58
Valor has a similar one:
https://www.amazon.com/Valor-Fitness-BD-62-Mount-Station/dp/B01LOX2PPO
I got this adapter sleeve pair, but as I'm used to all my Rogue gear, the quality control is hit or miss here. One adapter sleeve was perfect and fits my bumpers fine, the other one has an end cap with was turned slightly and caused me to have to forcefully push the plates on. Using some pliers to turn it a bit fixed the issue to where I at least didn't have to sand the little bit down. Speaking of quality control, the welds/angles on the BD-62 weren't perfect, as I noticed one of the pulley pieces was slightly angled so I couldn't quite get the full 180 degrees of turning because the bolt contacted the inner side, but it's almost unnoticeable.
The resistance on the concentric portion is normal. I was kind of worried about the reviews saying it's not that fluid, and was debating on going with the Archon model that touts ball bearings, but couldn't justify the extra ~$150 (the BD-62 was ~$205 at the time which seemed low, so I pulled the trigger) just for that. Some BD-62 reviewers did mention greasing up their setup which fixed any qualms of lack-of-smoothness.
I bought some silicone spray while waiting for the thing to ship, and when it all arrived it seemed smooth enough already. I sprayed it lightly with the silicone anyway, it may or may not have helped, nothing substantial.
Tangentially the Archon does have a lower-mount and is taller (some people complain about the height of the BD-62, it's fine for me), but the height of the Archon was a dealbreaker for me because it was going under my garage door. I'm glad the rubber wedge keeps the BD-62 stable on the floor or else rigging a mount would have been a pain in the ass.
The eccentric part is not perfect in the sense that it's not like pulling on bands where you have instant tension on the eccentric portion. With the cables, gravity takes a split second to reverse the momentum of the weights, but I suppose this is going to happen with all cable machines.
In the end, I built my own pulley system before this, taking the Spud Inc stuff as reference, buying my own pulleys and custom length cables from National Gym Supply - which is definitely better than the Spud stuff because those custom cables are really nice.
However, I was (expectedly) too lazy to put them up and bring them back down, so they just sit in a corner. The BD-62 is already set up at all times, so I can very easily use it ad hoc, which leads to more use, which means it was most definitely worth me buying.