Nbrice Stainless Carbon Banksticks & Buzzer Bars

Anglers are always on the look out for the next vogue tackle company and products to rest their expensive rods and reels upon. With an upsurge off custom manufacturers hitting the market in recent years, to buck the trend against low grade stainless products flooding the tackle shop's shelves from the Far East, the English manufacturers that manufacture in-house have been taking a big share of the market with their products.

Most of the custom manufacturers have stuck to the standard stainless steel products to be the staple items that they supply, Nbrice have hit the market in a big way with both stainless steel products and their range of carbon fibre equipment.

UKMA contacted Neville at Nbrice to see about obtaining some of the products to put through our tests, and within a few days a box containing some buzzer bars and banksticks was sitting in the UKMA office awaiting us to run our eyes over.

More and more anglers each year are lightening up on the weight of tackle that they take with them on both short and long sessions. Without any shadow of a doubt, rod support is one area where anglers are usually laden down, carrying numbers of stainless steel banksticks and buzzer bars with them. As individual items, a stainless steel bankstick may not seem to weigh a great deal, but when you put 6 of them together along with buzzer bars, you can easily be carrying in excess of 8 or 9 kilos of metal to do a task that requires them to just be pushed into the bank and the rods placed on top of them. Anglers have favoured stainless steel over other materials purely for the lifespan that the material offers, but what a lot of anglers do not realise is that there are lots of different grades in stainless steel, and only the most expensive of these items will last the angler a lifetime. With this in mind, there are now several companies that are offering carbon fibre equivalents of these products, which offer almost the same strength as the stainless counterparts, but offer a significant weight saving and allow the angler to move swims without feeling as if they are having to carry their car with them in their holdall or rucksack.

Obviously using carbon fibre to replace stainless steel can have its drawbacks, but the pro's seriously out weigh the cons.

Nbrice have put a lot of thought into the materials used to manufacture their products. When using a material like carbon fibre, it is easy to make the mistake and use a thinner walled rolled carbon fibre to save manufacturing costs, but if this is done, the product will not last the rigours or the way that anglers treat (or should that be mistreat) their tackle. In the manufacture of their carbon products, Nbrice have calculated the optimum wall thickness to offer rigidity and maximum strength from the material, without adding unrequired weight. To follow what todays serious anglers want, the company have had the carbon fibre components manufactured and rolled in England. This includes the centre section of the bankstick, which is also manufactured out of carbon fibre and is also ultra-rigid and bends less at full extension than the equivalent diameter hollow stainless tube.

Nbrice could have easily plumped for plastic, ceramic compounds or low grade stainless steel to finish off the banksticks and buzzer bars, but this would then negate the benefits of developing such a superb carbon fibre "chassis". The points of the banksticks have been machined from very high quality stainless steel, which weighs more than carbon fibre obviously, but offers a product that is harder wearing than some competing products on the market. During the tests, we managed to push the carbon banksticks into sunbaked clay using some force and didn't feel as if the bankstick was going to break at any point. The same can be said about pushing the banksticks into gravel - the banksticks went in with no problems and once in, did not feel as if they were going to move about - even with the centre section extended to almost full length.

The stainless steel fittings are manufactured again in England, and are of the highest quality - both in workmanship and material used. The threads to screw buzzers or back rests into have been tapped cleanly and of sufficient cut depth not to easily cross thread or be damaged should a bit of grit get into them. The thumbscrews used on the banksticks for adjustment of the centre section have been manufactured to offer good grip in all conditions. This is something that lets a lot of banksticks down and we have all experienced it at some point where grip has not been able to be gained on the thumbscrew for some reason to fully tighten. The thumbscrews also don't mark the centre shaft when tightened up fully.

Obviously carbon and stainless products are not going to be cheap, and some anglers may baulk at the prices, but in an age where you either buy quality that is going to last a lifetime, or you buy cheap and end up replacing it at least once a year - costing significantly more money over a short period of time compared to the initial expenditure on a top quality product. All prices include postage & packaging direct from NBRICE.

Some people may look at the size of the 2 rod fixed buzzer bars and think that they would not be wide enough to house rods holding big pit reels. I must admit, I was of the same mindset, but once I tried them with my Shimano Power Aero XT reels, I was pleasantly surprised that I could lift either rod off the bar without knocking the other rod off.

Final Thoughts

There isn't much that can be written about a bankstick or buzzer bar, but I have to be totally honest and say that I cannot find fault with the carbon banksticks or buzzer bars from NBRICE. Everything about the product is perfect from the machined stainless components to the rolled carbon sections, each item was flawless. On the join with the buzzer bar where the single bankstick attaches, there is usually some wobble, but with the NBRICE bar, there was no wobble at all - even when attached to a bankstick. All the stainless fittings have been perfectly machined to low tolerances and this allows the fit between carbon and stainless to be perfect. The stainless components on the buzzer bars were all perfectly aligned.

Just picking one of the products up screams QUALITY, without a good look taken.

The NBRICE products are not the cheapest on the market, but English manufacturing and for workmanship of this standard, you would expect to pay signficantly more.

I would not say that metal rod supports are now truely redundant as they still have uses were carbon would not be up to the task, but I can honestly say that the NBRICE carbon sticks and bars will be the first ones out the workshop when going for a session. I hope to be able to look at more products from NBRICE in the future.

For more information on the NBRICE Stainless range of products, please click the image below to visit the website.