After seeing a video from our very own Sarg on YouTube about discounted bats from GN with no apparent defects, I thought I'd look up the Ebay seller mentioned and have a look at what was available.
It appears that this ebay account is the clearance section for Gray Nicolls and their associated brands and they were selling off bats with 'cosmetic defects' for A$150, so I thought it was worth the gamble. One of our young stars at the club has one of these and it's a weapon in his hands so that swayed me toward the Ultra instead of the Atomic at the same price.
This one has a 39mm edge one side and 40mm the other, heavily concaved with a spine down into the toe which peaks around 63mm. Toe is ok (didn't measure) not as thin as some of the GN's from 2018/19 which were a bit fragile. This isn't Australian made but the finishing is ok, it's no Laver&Wood and certainly wouldn't meet the standards of Northern Monkey but it's not as bad as some of the other low end bats from SS and the like. A couple of visible sanding marks, slight wobble in the spine and not the best job of handle binding but for a wet weather/net bat it's fine. There's a couple of blemishes/knots on the face but nothing that really bothers me, the weight is 2 9 pickup is ok and feels much like all my other 2 9 bats really. The handle is actually quite nice, round on the top hand and a nice medium oval on the bottom hand; a bit GM really. Not as thick as an Aldred but much nicer than the GN noodles of recent years.
Ping with the mallet is ok, but a bit sluggish with a ball and sounds a bit dead. I've got some oil on it at the moment and will give it some time on the mallet over the weekend which I'm sure will improve things.
I'm not sold on it at the moment but it's early days, they retail at $350 here so I won't lose money if I sell it on.
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Topic: Gray Nicolls Ultra 800 (Read 11679 times)