sharp_edge
Gold Member
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2015
- Messages
- 5,718
I would pick washers over the above bearings any day of the week plus the weekend.
Spyderco released an updated version of the Advocate with improved bearings a little while after that notice. Most of the currently available Advocates from your usual dealers are those improved models, you can tell by the date code on the box. You want an R year code for the updated CQI version.
Gayle Bradley did an epic job on the Advocate blade and I consider the knife
a significant piece of work worth owning. It is a shame the originals had pivot
issues...I think that "killed" it.
I regard it as a "must own". As a total package...it is compelling. I always loathed
CR integral locks...until I got my Advocate. There is just something about it...
My son went nuts when I showed it to him. He got it right away. An Epic under
appreciated piece. I am never selling mine.
The original GB came out of nowhere also, suddenly a production knife with M4 and CF, and for $100-120?!
Agree with all of this. Every GB knife has been so nice to use. The Advocate took it a step up and was unexpected, at least from me, a flipper with bearings from a maker who mostly sticks to traditionals and fixed blades. The original GB came out of nowhere also, suddenly a production knife with M4 and CF, and for $100-120?!
I think Spyderco's response and treatment of the update killed it as much as the original issue did. This thread and the "official response" on their forum kind of show that, I think. Official response: "We have never had any in for warranty work so believe this is not a real problem...but umm if it is it's probably your fault for disassembling it and then tightening it too much." That clearly set some people off. And then despite claiming that, they make substantial changes. The problem there is they kept the model name the same with no easy way to distinguish between them (a problem this thread shows) while not pulling back the originals to fix, so everyone was afraid to buy one. Making changes and calling it CQI works for small and/or unnecessary updates, but when there's a fundamental flaw and you don't pull the original off the shelves, you're putting fear and uncertainty into buying it.
I can remember them being sold at lots of places for $129.99 for what seemed like forever.
I can remember thinking to myself then that this was one of the best values EVER in a production folder.
And then one day <POOF> they were gone. I got one plus a few pre-need replacements before they disappeared.