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Eddy
(#858)

Front	Rear

Front: Handle Extended	Top

Front: Open for Rigging	Rear: Open for Rigging

Technical Details

I acquired my Eddy from Mountain Gear in 2007.

The Eddy is 127 mm. tall, 71 mm. wide, and 36 mm. thick. It weights 367 g.

The Eddy is a shaped like a flattened and deformed avocado.

The Eddy consists of four major components: the body, the rotating cam, a cover plate, and an actuating lever assembly.

The body and cover plate are forged from aluminum. Superficially, they are mirror images of each other, although there are some details where this symmetry breaks down. In other, more practical words, the front cover and rear body are roughly the same thickness, and the seam between the two splits the closed device in half. A 6.4 mm. stainless steel rivet joins the front and back near the top. Each piece has a cast stainless steel insert, and the inserts are shaped so that with the covers closed, the inserts form a groove for 10 mm. diameter rope.

The cam assembly pivots on a roughly 15 mm. stainless steel axle attached to the body. The attachment method is not clearly visible. A spring-loaded button protruding from the cam axle passes through a hole in the front plate when the cover is closed.

The bottom of the body and cover have aligned 18 mm. holes that form the attachment point. The body has a cast stainless steel anvil next to the hole. The anvil has a U-shaped groove for the rope to run over. The anvil and lever assembly are held by a 5 mm. stainless steel rivet.

The rotating cam is cast steel. It has a webbed design with several reinforcing ribs. The right side of the cam has a rounded V-shaped rope channel with about a 6 mm. minor diameter at the base of the V. The left side has two small grooves to provide a finger grip for feeding rope. The bottom of the cam has a flat area that squeezes the rope against the lower anvil when the cam rotates counter-clockwise (i.e., when it closes). A double-ended plunger assembly with of two spring-loaded balls is pressed into the top left corner of the cam assembly. The cam can be aligned so that the balls rest in detents in the body and cover plates, lightly holding the cam in a centered position.

The lever assembly consists of a control lever connected to the cam by a steel link. Pulling the lever downward forces the link upward, opening the cam; however, once the lever passes a certain point, the link disengages and the cam rotates closed again under rope tension. At this point, raising the lever opens the cam; but again, the action stops if the lever moves too far.

The cover is printed with "EDELRID," a stylized "e," "ropes 9≤ø≤11mm," a drawing of the rope path with a climber icon at the top and a hand icon at the bottom, "EN 892," "EDDY," a double-arrow logo, "CE0123," "fall arrest system," a double ended arrow with "press" at one end and "&push" at the other (i.e., opening instructions), a book-with-an-"i" icon, "prEN 15151," and "www.edelrid.de." The cam is etched with a climber icon and "33 06 1164." The lower anvil has an etched hand-holding-a-rope icon.

Comments

The Eddy is one of the following closely-related devices:

Image Device Anthron Lory	Image Device Bornack Lory	Image Device Edelrid Eddy	Image Device Rollgliss R250

Image Device Singing Rock Sir	Image Device Skylotec Lory	Image Device Skylotec Lory Pro

The Slovenian company Anthron made the Anthron Lory, Bornack Lory, Edelrid Eddy, Rollgliss R250, and Singing Rock Sir. The German firm Skylotec bought Anthron in 2016 and continued production with the Skylotec Lory and Lory Pro.

Some of these were sold as belay devices, and the others as descenders. The belay device and descender versions are not the same. The difference is subtle, and easily overlooked. The belay versions have a double-ended plunger pressed into the cam. The cam can be aligned so that spring-loaded balls rest in detents in the body and cover plates, lightly holding the cam in a position that allows relatively free motion of a slack rope.

Belay Cam	Descender Cam

One would think that any of these could be used for either purpose, but Skylotec warns against this. They certified their Lory and Lory Pro to different standards. The lawyers have spoken, and I will not openly disagree (in the U.S.A., it is unwise to disagree with lawyers). Having tried both, I can say that the belay cam seems only slightly easier to use when belaying. With either cam, I could feed rope out easily by manually lifting the cam with an index finger. Taking rope in was even easier - I just pulled it through the device. I didn't notice any difference between the two cams when rappelling: rope tension easily overpowers the spring-loaded balls.

The Eddy has excellent workmanship and it functions well. It is solid, but it is also quite heavy. This should not be a problem for gym climbers or people who drive to the base of short sport climbs, but I wouldn't consider lugging one of these to a remote climb or up a wall.

The lever function provides partial backup for the user not knowing how to use the lever, but like all such devices, it relies on the user being completely incompetent rather than partially incompetent. By definition, a partially incompetent belayer would drop me too fast without moving the lever past the release point. I'm not convinced that this sort of feature is an improvement on selecting a competent belayer - or not falling in the first place.

The lever action has a bizarre feature: once the user moves the lever past the release point, the lever function reverses. In other words, I would normally lower by pulling down on the lever, with farther down meaning a faster lower. If I pull too far, then the cam locks. At this point, I could resume lowering by pushing the lever up, with farther up meaning a faster lower. If I go to far again, the action reverses a second time, and the lever operates as it originally did. I do not like this behavior. I found that if I somehow pull the handle into the lower lock position, I could "slam" the handle upward to the upper locking position with a negligible drop, bypassing the reverse-acting behavior. Sort this out at home, not at the cliffs. I give this feature a lemon award: .

The lever assembly is greased. This grease will pick up sand and dirt. As an enclosed device, the Eddy is not well-suited for use on severely mud-covered ropes.

My Eddy came with a 48 page instruction booklet written in what seemed like half the world’s languages. Four pages were in a curious tongue resembling English. It follows the common European practice of saying very little of value in poorly translated text. For example: "For the purpose of securing with rope deflection, the two strands of rope can also be operated directly for pulling in the rope." I don't know what that means. This is no worse than the common American practice of providing no instructions whatsoever yet issuing a legal notice requiring the user to follow those nonexistent instructions.

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Pinch
(#3934)

Front	Rear

Top	Bottom

Front: Open for Rigging	Rear: Open for Rigging

Anti-panic mechanism, External	Anti-panic mechanism, Internal	Anti-panic Defeat Pin

Technical Details

I acquired my Edelrid Pinch from Climb On Equipment in 2024.

The Pinch is 93 mm. long, 100 mm. wide, 42 mm. high, and weighs 241 g.

The Grigri consists of a spring-loaded cam assembly mounted between a back piece and a swinging front piece. The two plates are forged from aluminum alloy and then anodized. These pieces pivot on an axle on the right side. The front piece has a spring-loaded lever that engages a shoulder on the cam anchor. Depressing the top of the lever releases the pin, allowing the front piece to open. A notch at the lower left of the front plate engages a shoulder pin riveted to the rear piece when the gate is closed. Each piece has a 22.7 mm. tall, 18.6 mm. wide pentagonal eye for carabiner attachment. The pieces have lugs to allow attaching directly to a harness belay strap. If desired when using the strap, the Pinch can be additionally backed up with any locking carabiner.

The cam is cast from stainless steel. The cam can rotate about 135° clockwise with respect to the rear plate, but a strong spring opposes this rotation. If the belayed climber falls, the cam rotates clockwise, and the top surface of the cam squeezes the rope against a stainless steel anvil. The anvil is notched on the outside to provide additional braking friction. A spring-loaded plastic handle on the rear of cam gives the belayer more leverage to release the cam. As shipped, the cam has an anti-panic feature that releases the cam if the lever is pulled too far.

The front is printed with "EDELRID," and "PINCH." A plastic cover surrounding the opening lever mechanism is molded with a hand icon, a climber icon, a book-with-an-"i"icon, "EN 15151-1," "Ø 8,5-10,5 mm," and "CE2777." The inside of the front piece is printed with "UIAA," "EN 12841-2006/C," "120 kg," "73838 02," a factory icon, "2024 07 000001156," and a QR code. The inside of the can has "EDELRID," "Achener Weg 66," "88316 Isny," and "Germany" in raised letters and a forged climber icon." The inside of the rear piece has a forged hand icon.

Comments

The Pinch is well made and feels solid. It operates smoothly. The ability to attach the Pinch to a harness belay loop without a carabiner is interesting. I prefer to use a carabiner to orient the Pinch the way I prefer, but this is not strictly necessary.

I do not like anti-panic features on my devices. Quite frankly, nobody has ever given me a good reason why panic is a desirable, rational response. I prefer to avoid people who use such theatrics instead of behaving rationally.

Edelrid provides curiously contradictory instructions on how the one on the Pinch is to be used after the belayer panics:

"If the anti-panic function has been activated, the releasing lever must be moved forward once again to continue the lowering process."

"If the anti-panic function has been activated, the lever can be pulled further back in special situations and by experienced persons in order to continue the lowering process."

I could not find further details in their instructions, so the expert user must figure it out for themselves.

Anti-panic features tend to be sensitive to rope diameter and operating conditions. This is because they depend on cam position rather than rope speed or tension. Designing to consider the latter is difficult, but competent belayers already handle multiple factors well. We don't need lawyers designing devices to override competent people.

Thankfully, Edelrid provided a better solution. The instructions had a tiny (3.3 mm.) hex-socket post taped to them. This was not discussed in the instructions as far as I could tell, nor could I find mention of it elsewhere. I found that the post could be screwed into the handle where it would contact a nubbin on the cam before the anti-panic feature activated, thereby defeating the "feature.". Problem solved.