Bencher By 1 Review

The bencher by 1 iambic paddle is just one in a series are dual lever iambic paddles.

Bencher by 1 review.

I prefer the st 1 single lever a lot. The iambic bencher by 1 doesn t have this design problem and a little bit of unflatness doesn t bother it. And since you ll probably own one someday anyway you might as well buy one right off the bat and save the suspense. I do recommend that you purchase the universal hookup kit it makes things so easy to get the by 1 connected to your radio and up and running.

The heavy steel bases and and non skid feet keep it in place while operating. My bencher by 1 paddles have about a 3 4 oto spacing on the paddles and i have to consciously hold my hand open a bit wider than it naturally wants to be to keep from accidentally touching a paddle. Very smooth built like a tank and heavy. I am not a great cw person yet.

I bought one of these to replace a bencher by 1 i bought in 1980. It features adjustable contact spacing and tension. So far i m very happy with the performance but i ve yet to key a set of begali paddles but the bencher is also less expensive. One of the things i dislike about the by 1 series is their tendency to fly apart under vigorous keying.

As a long time user of the by 1 bencher paddles think 32 years i ve always wanted to try a higher end key. Like my previous bencher by 1 paddle some of the holes weren t drilled fully and the threads not cut all the way down making assembly screws jam in place before they were fully tight. I picked this up in huntsville at the hamfest. Tony offers different oto spacing down to 1 2 which i found to be about perfect.

Like the vibroplex bug the bencher by 1 is everywhere. A few yrs after the trade i saw in qst a mod to make a dual paddle into a single with a simple piece of plastic. Having knocked out more than half the u s. Brought it home hooked it up and realized just how much i liked it.

I got a bencher by 2 and a few years later traded it for a st 1. But for a first paddle you d have to look long and hard to find a better key to start out with. It s nice and crisp i like mine a lot i m sorry to take so long to describe a problem that s caused by a few thousands of an inch of mis alignment. I learned cw on a set of borrowed bencher by 1 iambic paddles.

The by 1 was damaged in a recent move so it was time to shop for something a little more modern. Works good for us qrs operators a whole lot better then the dual paddle. Bnr by 1 a couple of quick adjustments and it was good to go. Some ops love them some ops don t.

Ultimately i had to give those paddles back to their owner and i ve been paddle less ever since. Self adjusting needle bearings and gold plated solid silver contacts.