Soft catch and easy slack feeding with assisted braking devices?

I'm looking for an assisted braking device (that isn't the Camp Matic) that will give a soft catch and gives out slack to leaders without locking up (I've had some trouble with this on my current Mad Rock Lifeguard).  I thought maybe passive assisted braking devices like the Mammut Smart 2 might fit that bill (and a lesser cost), but have heard that they can actually be a bit less forgiving in terms of catch and ease of paying out slack than GriGris.  Given the preponderence of belay devices on the market now, I'm finding it tough to narrow it down.  Thoughts on this?

Oh, in case it matters, hoping to use it for sport cragging and to complement my Guide ATC on multipitch climbs.

I have a grigri 2 and love it. But if I was too buy one and didn't want to spend $100,  I'd get the smart 2.0 from Backcountry...their silver one is on sale for $26.21...its pretty hard to beat that.

Also, the new black diamond ATC pilot looks sick but I haven't used it before. It costs about $45

If you have difficulty feeding slack on a Mad Rock Lifeguard, I don't know what to tell you.  I bought it and an ATC pilot at the same time, and the Lifeguard quickly became my goto device for precisely the applications you refer to, while the Pilot rests in my gear bin.  Feeding slack on the Lifeguard is lightning fast as long as you keep the two strands parallel.  I have no experience with the Smart, so cannot comment on it.

Grigri. There's a reason it's so popular. A soft catch is provided by the belayer, not the device. Feeding slack is easy(easier than ATC) once you learn the right technique, as long as your rope isn't fat or fuzzed out. The locking mechanism is exactly what makes it so convenient for belaying, especially projecting. Even for multipitch I normally take one Grigri (for second) and one ATC-guide for the leader..

What thickness rope are you using?

Grigri.

El Duderino wrote: I'm looking for an assisted braking device (that isn't the Camp Matic) that will give a soft catch and gives out slack to leaders without locking up (I've had some trouble with this on my current Mad Rock Lifeguard).  I thought maybe passive assisted braking devices like the Mammut Smart 2 might fit that bill (and a lesser cost), but have heard that they can actually be a bit less forgiving in terms of catch and ease of paying out slack than GriGris.  Given the preponderence of belay devices on the market now, I'm finding it tough to narrow it down.  Thoughts on this?

Oh, in case it matters, hoping to use it for sport cragging and to complement my Guide ATC on multipitch climbs.

This depends more upon the belayor and the rope. I use the Smart for everything, Gris are over-priced paper weights.

Some people say they hate the megajul but I’ve never understood why. $30 I think. 

Yeah...the irony is that Grigris feed better than just about any other device if you actually know how to use them, including tubes.

They all work fine, if you get used to them.  Basically, it comes down to personal preference.  You give a sift catch by being an attentive belayer.  You can give a hard catch with an ATC and a soft catch with any assisted braking device.  Same with paying out slack.  My buddy isn't great when he uses my smart, but he is fine with his ATC and GriGri, but that's because he isn't used to the Smart.

The only problem I have with the assisted braking devices are only when I have to go back and forth between taking slack and paying it out quickly.  If the climber grabs slack to clip, then drops it and looks like he is about to peel, I will try and take up some of that extra slack, if he then tries to clip again, the device will lock up and I have to quickly unload it so I can pay out slack again.  The standard tube device is going to be more forgiving in that situation, but it does not come up that often.

As others have said, the "soft catch" is something provided by belayer actions, not by an assisted-locking device, so you can't include "soft catches" in the criteria for such devices.  

In my opinion, a flaw in most of the assisted locking devices, including the Grigri, Mammut Smart, Edelrid Juls of various sorts, and BD Pilot, is that they have to be forced into an unlocked position in order to pump slack to the leader, either by thumb pressure on a cam or thumb leverage on a loop or handle.  This not only encourages "lazy" belaying, in which the device is continually unlocked, but also makes some compound actions such as quick payout followed by quick take-in followed by quick payout likely to lock up the device.

The only devices I know  that feed and take in exactly like an ATC and do not force the user to implement an unlocking action for quick pumping of slack to the leader are the Click Up and Alpine Up.  They too can be accidentally locked up, as can an ATC,  if the user doesn't keep the strands sufficiently close to parallel when pumping out slack, but a quick shove with the heels of the hands unlocks them again, even if there is some tension in the rope.  The UKC had a group test of a bunch of assisted locking devices, including the Click Up and both Grigri variants, and the Click Up came out best in the test; see   ukclimbing.com/gear/climbin… . Since then, a new version of the Click Up has come out that may or may not be better when it comes to pumping slack.

Some of the other devices are more versatile for such things as belaying the second, ascending a rope, and single-strand rappels.  The Grigri is the only device that works in the UIAA factor 2 fall configuration; all the other devices, including ATC's, require a specific and unintuitive belayer response in order to have any braking effect at all in this extreme case.  

Tests by Jim Titt reveal that the Smarts and Juls level off in braking performance at high loads and so are eventually outperformed by the non-locking ATC-XP, l at least for people with suitably strong grips.  These tests are probably only significant for multipitch falls in which the leader falls past the belay.  In such extreme circumstances, the Smart and Jul belayer is undergunned.  The Up's are much better in this regard, but might damage the sheath under extreme loads.

The assisted locking devices become unuseable if the ropes are too thick or too fuzzy or both.  Generally speaking, what I've found and heard from others is that ropes at the upper end of the manufacturer's stated range are not going to handle well.

Grigri2 for sport projs, or trad, or multi pitch lead/follow. I use it for everything. Bring the ATC for rapping.

You can get a brand spanking new grigri 2 on Ebay for  $50-60. Like others have said feeding rope smoothly is all about technique and practice.

+1 for the mad rock lifeguard. Easier to feed the rope through than the grigri2 (since it has a stronger spring to resist pinching the rope, prematurely), smaller, but a bit less forgiving when lowering/rappelling that the grigri (it takes some practice to be able to lower people smoothly).

I've used a Smart for a couple of years now and can't recommend it enough. I like to think of it as a cheaper GriGri without any moving pieces that weighs 1/3 as much. It feels more like a tube than a GriGri and using the handle to pay out slack isn't an issue because the handle is designed so that your brake hand stays on the rope the entire time. 

Matt Himmelstein wrote: They all work fine, if you get used to them.  Basically, it comes down to personal preference.  You give a sift catch by being an attentive belayer.  You can give a hard catch with an ATC and a soft catch with any assisted braking device.  Same with paying out slack.  My buddy isn't great when he uses my smart, but he is fine with his ATC and GriGri, but that's because he isn't used to the Smart.

The only problem I have with the assisted braking devices are only when I have to go back and forth between taking slack and paying it out quickly.  If the climber grabs slack to clip, then drops it and looks like he is about to peel, I will try and take up some of that extra slack, if he then tries to clip again, the device will lock up and I have to quickly unload it so I can pay out slack again.  The standard tube device is going to be more forgiving in that situation, but it does not come up that often.

As far as the soft catch is concerned, point taken: that depends more on the belayer than the device.

As for easy slack feeding, perhaps it's user error; I'll admit that. The problem I seem to have is particularly when clipping.  Even if I have slack out, there seems to be an inevitable tug of war when the leader takes up a bight to clip faster than I can pay out rope (particularly bad if they are taking up a bunch of slack to clip a bolt above their heads).  Then I can't release the cam until they stop tugging, but they don't because they're pumped and panicking at the clip.  I mean, I guess the easy option would be to leave more slack out, but that would leave more than I'm comfortable with and it's never been an issue for me with an ATC.

El Duderino wrote:

I mean, I guess the easy option would be to leave more slack out, but that would leave more than I'm comfortable with and it's never been an issue for me with an ATC.

No, you shouldn't leave extra slack out or you are exposing the climber to much bigger falls than necessary. Read the manual or watch the video, there is a way to hold the Grigri (index finger under the lip, back three on the brake) so that when you need to feed slack quickly you just depress the cam with your thumb and you can whip out two armloads of slack. The key is, while you squeeze with your index and thumb,  don't squeeze the brake strand with your other three. Obviously important to watch the climber and anticipate clips, a pair of belay glasses make this more comfortable on the neck and make you look wicked cool.

The belay device is essentially irrelevant to how soft a catch the leader gets. I'm almost guaranteed to get a soft catch no matter what due to weight imbalance, whereas I really need to pay attention as belayer or else my climber is highly to get a hard stop if not get outright spiked, also because of weight imbalance. The part that matters is technique and attentiveness.

And solely in terms of paying out rope,i.e., no consideration of rappelling, belaying a second, etc etc, just feeding rope with an assisted locking device, I find the Pilot beats the Megajul, which handily beats lever-operated devices like the Grigri. Ergonomic friendliness matters here.

El Duderino wrote:

As far as the soft catch is concerned, point taken: that depends more on the belayer than the device.

As for easy slack feeding, perhaps it's user error; I'll admit that. The problem I seem to have is particularly when clipping.  Even if I have slack out, there seems to be an inevitable tug of war when the leader takes up a bight to clip faster than I can pay out rope (particularly bad if they are taking up a bunch of slack to clip a bolt above their heads).  Then I can't release the cam until they stop tugging, but they don't because they're pumped and panicking at the clip.  I mean, I guess the easy option would be to leave more slack out, but that would leave more than I'm comfortable with and it's never been an issue for me with an ATC.

At the end of long route, when the climber is out of sight, it is going to be difficult to judge the amount of slack out.  But when the climber is in sight on a sport route, short roping the climber repeatedly is a belayer issue that has little to do with the device.

rgold wrote: As others have said, the "soft catch" is something provided by belayer actions, not by an assisted-locking device, so you can't include "soft catches" in the criteria for such devices.  

. . .

The only devices I know  that feed and take in exactly like an ATC and do not force the user to implement an unlocking action for quick pumping of slack to the leader are the Click Up and Alpine Up.  They too can be accidentally locked up, as can an ATC,  if the user doesn't keep the strands sufficiently close to parallel when pumping out slack, but a quick shove with the heels of the hands unlocks them again, even if there is some tension in the rope.  The UKC had a group test of a bunch of assisted locking devices, including the Click Up and both Grigri variants, and the Click Up came out best in the test; see   ukclimbing.com/gear/climbin… . Since then, a new version of the Click Up has come out that may or may not be better when it comes to pumping slack. . . .

The new version is the Click Up +.  It's not available in the US yet; it should be soon they say.  My friend was in Italy and I had him buy one and bring it back, and I used it for the first time yesterday.  It's very similar to the original, but has (they say) some improved geometry to help with fatter ropes.  I was using a thin rope so couldn't evaluate that aspect when climbing "for real," I did play around with a fatter rope at home and think it felt smoother, but would need a regular Click Up for a side-by-side comparison to say anything definitive.

I'd say prob don't buy a regular Click Up now, unless you get a big discount--these things should last more or less forever so you may as well get the new design when it's available soon.

I'm a big Grigri fan and user (currently use Grigri2), so had no real reason to get the Click Up +, basically just a gear whore / toy thing.  I think it's a good device, but I'm not sure I like it better than a Grigri.  I did have a few instances of unintended lock up when paying out slack, and then it requires a move to un-lock as rgold says.  My lock ups were probably my fault.  Pretty much all of these "new fangled" devices (including Grigri) have a learning curve, and it's important to make sure you are using them correctly (e.g., not improperly engaging the cam on an Grigri) and to practice so you can smoothly throw out / take in slack.  

From reading these types of threads for a long time, there seems to be a subset of people who just can't quite figure out the right way to use a Grigri.  Without being condescending I hope, part of me thinks Grigris are still the best, anyone should be able to figure out how to use them by watching Petzl's video and practicing (just throw out entire rope lengths with the quick feed technique until it's automatic), and all of these other devices are interesting and effective, but perhaps not quite as good.  But more than one way to skin a cat.