Had a brilliant trip down to H4L and just had to post a review of the visit!!
Background.
Having had a couple of H4L bats before I always found them to ping great with excellent pickup! Along side BAS (and CA's of old) these pretty much cover what I tend to use in games. I wondered what a crazy merger of these would bring about alongside a hint of the GN WARNER too so thought why not find out.
Had a chat with Matt and he was brave enough to offer the custom experience in line with his new model launch. Funniest thing is, he had an idea how fussy I am and still let me within 100 miles of his workshop. lol.
Matt found some suitable candidates in terms of clefts and I went to see him with my old BAS and some sketches of my dream concoction of favourite bat shapes lol
Bat specs - Opting for the CUSTOM grade I had access to the best of the best willow and full customisation. Of course being their in person meant that I could tweak the bat as the exact shape I had in mind was uncharted territory for me.
Willow - Clean face, even straight grains but more importantly promising ping and be light cleft too! (not fussy at all lol)
Face - Non flat face
Handle - 3 rubber spring thin semi oval handle. I opted for the new warbird handle as I like the shorter blade option from my experience and longer handle with counterweight would only help.
Weight- Approx 2lb13
Concaving - NONE lol
Bow - Medium
Sizes - Shoulder 15mm. Peak edge 35mm .peak spine 65mm. Toe about 20mm with it fairly square and angled.
Profile - High middle with rounded spine into toe. Edge profile thick fairly high up the blade and extended as low as possible
What I actually ended up with was 17mm shoulder, 43 mm edge, 25mm toe 69,70 mm spine and no concaving too in just under 2lb14 including grip!
I simply could not believe the pick up and balance. The cleft, handle, the profile and of course Matt working his magic made a bat, that for me, is absolutely lovely!!!
The ping was crazy and as per usual Matt was smashing his sealing!!! To be honest ,I take that as a given with Matt's bats as he is the PING KING!! I had a snoop at some of his G2, G1 and many of those also had superb ping which is good from a customers point of view as consistency in performance at all price points is key! This bat has ticked all my boxes! ( and believe me, there are a lot of them! lol) so I am well chuffed!!!
I took some pics as you will see below but unfortunately the "CUSTOM" model stickers are not ready to be unleashed yet so will get bat sent to me later.
Bat aside, the experience was awesome as Matt was most welcoming and happy to carry out my endless tweaking. A genuine and very friendly bloke as expected from the conversations over the phone. I was also impressed with his ability to find tools INSTANTLY amongst all the array of a batmakers gadgets on the bench!!!! lol
Overall a top experience, making the bat worth a whole lot more to me by the value for money and more so, the excellent service. Refreshing to see genuine bat making from a company that does it all, from willow to bat in hand!
Enjoy folks! :-)
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Topic: H4L CUSTOM DADDY BAT HAS ARRIVED!!!! :-) (Read 19728 times)