Experienced Gear - A review website for products at the rusting edge

[Crow]

Mag Braintrust,

rfconroy and I have been working on this project and wanted to share it with you all. Our primary goal is to compare previous generations of ski and bike gear with newer counterparts to help inform "new to me" purchases. We also plan to review new products that are under represented on traditional review websites and suggest, test, and review simple gear modifications. Check it out and let us know what you think.

experiencedgear.net

[alpinevibes]

Mag Braintrust,

rfconroy and I have been working on this project and wanted to share it with you all. Our primary goal is to compare previous generations of ski and bike gear with newer counterparts to help inform "new to me" purchases. We also plan to review new products that are under represented on traditional review websites and suggest, test, and review simple gear modifications. Check it out and let us know what you think.

experiencedgear.net

Dig it!

[scmartin69]

Mag Braintrust,

rfconroy and I have been working on this project and wanted to share it with you all. Our primary goal is to compare previous generations of ski and bike gear with newer counterparts to help inform "new to me" purchases. We also plan to review new products that are under represented on traditional review websites and suggest, test, and review simple gear modifications. Check it out and let us know what you think.

experiencedgear.net

I wanna know how the Anal Intruder stacks up to today's new-fangled, waterproof rechargeable models.
https://youtu.be/ZnYgbYyhHIg

Sent from my SM-G986U using Tapatalk

[scmartin69]

I wanna know how the Anal Intruder stacks up to today's new-fangled, waterproof rechargeable models.
https://youtu.be/ZnYgbYyhHIg

Sent from my SM-G986U using Tapatalk

And I left a real suggestion for y'all, seems like a fun project.

Sent from my SM-G986U using Tapatalk

[rfconroy]

EXPERIENCED GEAR - A REVIEW WEBSITE FOR PRODUCTS AT THE RUSTING EDGE

Crow's mom is experienced...

Now that we've gotten that out of the way -

This is definitely more of a "fun" project for us since we're both pretty nerdy on gear stuff, but we're really interested in folks feedback. What people think is good, not good, and what other stuff we should be doing?

Most of all: What are we missing?

We've got some hacks content coming up as well as a couple more skis and boots in the works as well, but can reprioritize based on what the pitchfork mob says.

As for the Anal Intruder...
We're on it! We were able to find two only slightly used ones.

[Vitamin I]

...
What people think is good, not good, and what other stuff we should be doing?

Most of all: What are we missing?
...

Looks fun. I want to create my own little website like that, so I put in the time to read through all the "ski" parts of your website, and wrote up my feedback for you:

Some ideas to consider:
- Rocker/camber profile: Display a photo of it. I feel like "the world" STILL doesn't provide easy-to-find rocker/camber photos for all ski models, so would be great if your process could include snapping those photos and displaying them.
- Mass of ski. Same argument..."The world" doesn't provide easy-to-find measurements for all ski models...So instead of publishing estimates from the manufacturer, you could measure it for us all.
- Specify Lengths in "Compare" Section: When you compared the JJ 2.0 185cm to "4FRNT Hoji MKIII", then my reaction is...well, are you comparing it to a 195cm Hoji? or to a 171cm Hoji? Or what? Big differences in performance between a 171 and 195, so you could specify the length there.
- Mount Positions relative to TC: Moving forward, maybe Crow could start measuring and reporting his mount positions as a number relative to TrueCenter. Belafonte page says "on the line", but sometimes the manufacturers change their lines from year to year, and the "relative to TC" method is robust to that stuff.
- Author Name at top: If you mention that name at the very top, then I can continue reading from there to read the whole review keeping in mind whether it's the opinion of your shorter/lighter writer or your taller/bigger writer. Otherwise, first thing I do is scroll to bottom to see the author name, then I scroll back up to restart reading the review.
- Links in Compare Section: Your page for Marksman mentions a comparison to the Sick Day 104, but no hyperlink there, so you might as well always hyperlink to your review page for that ski...more clicks for you, more views, etc.
- Google Search results for query="experienced gear": Your website is not easy to find via web search. Maybe some quickie minimal SEO effort might make your site more easy-to-find in Google Search.

Content Ideas:
- Might be fun to review a "cult classic ski" that you suspect is actually way overrated. Bad reviews are great, too. Might be fun to "prove" that some fond memories are way off...while other fond memories are still spot on. I dunno. Are Explosivs overrated? Axioms? Etc?
- Similarly, maybe seek some suspects of underrated skis. I suspect Scott skis are better in general than most people realize. Prior Overlord still hasn't gotten the wide-spread attention it deserves. Etc.

.

[mcski]

Great idea! I’ll def chk it out

[Crow]

Looks fun. I want to create my own little website like that, so I put in the time to read through all the "ski" parts of your website, and wrote up my feedback for you...

This is awesome feedback, I appreciate you taking the time to read through our content and write this up. If you're in the Tahoe area this winter, I'll buy you a beer sometime.

- I agree rocker/camber pics would be a good addition and this wouldn't require much work on our end. In general, we are planning to increase the quantity and quality of our photos for future reviews.
-Specifying lengths in comparison - Absolutely, great call
-Mount positions - You're right, I usually use distance from TC and then measure from the trail when mounting my own skis. For the Belafonte, I was a lazy and reused some existing mounting holes but I can go back and measure.
-Author name at the top: This makes a lot of sense. I always check to see if reviewers are similar to my size.
-Google SEO: I've been working on this the last few days. Turns out neither of us knew much about how search engines work. Google has been slow to index our site but I submitted our sitemap to search console yesterday and they've now indexed our home page and the Transition Smuggler review. So if you search "experienced gear", two pages now show up. I have some other small SEO ideas but my first priority is getting all of our URLs indexed.
-Cult classic review: Love it, I'll be trolling Gear Swap.

[snowaddict91]

Cool idea, excited to see where this goes.

[ex-powderbroker]

i dug the sick day review. cool that it’s still a relevant ski but don’t hesitate to put really old shit through the ringer too. those 201’s were state of the art only a few years ago!

[tang]

This is awesome - both helpful and super-fun. Sync it up with Marshall's newco project.
Would love to see a re-review of the EHP. Skied one of my hoarded ones the other day for first time this season - still fave ski of all-time

[rfconroy]

This is awesome - both helpful and super-fun. Sync it up with Marshall's newco project.

Never heard about this project - got any other details for us?

Would love to see a re-review of the EHP. Skied one of my hoarded ones the other day for first time this season - still fave ski of all-time

We will keep an eye out for a pair!

Also if generous mags are able and willing to loan gear out we would be stoked for the support.

[tang]

Never heard about this project - got any other details for us?

I'm sure you saw, but https://www.tetongravity.com/forums/...ted-Love-Songs