Fixe Aliens

I'm moving to Idaho after 9 years of grad school, 1 kid and being trapped on flat land. I have to rebuild my rack and I was wondering if anyone has any feedback about the Fixe Aliens. I used to climb in the Gunks and I love the older Aliens (pre 2007) and got a good bit of use out of them. Are the new ones of a similar quality?

Thanks for any info you can give. :-)

they have a tendency to explode. Bad design changes and worse QC than CCH. Totem, however, improved upon the alien design and has wonderful QC. If you like the aliens then get some totem basics. Also consider looking at the totem cam for the larger end.

I have a mix of the older aliens as well as the new ones. I agree that the old style are better, and would love to have the full range. (I have blue, green, and yellow). I also have the gray and red in the new fixe aliens, and I really like how they place, however I don't like how short the trigger is. This makes it hard to remove on a deep placement.

I agree on the QC issue. The first batch saw a lot of trigger wires fraying, so I sent both of them in once this happened (3 of 4 wires on each). Customer service was also not that great. It took well over 2 months to get my cams back. (Went from NH to Bishop, CA, then Spain and back to NH). I sent a couple emails and they weren't very prompt to respond either.

As far as the exploding aliens I haven't seen any, and I have taken some whips on them. I have heard rumors of them breaking but I still use, and really like them.

Go for the Totem Basics if you like the old alien design! I'm thinking of doing that next.

9 years of grad school? I'm afraid to even ask.

Thanks for all your help! Sucks that the quality went down hill. I'll definitely check out the Totem cams. I'm a sociologist and my method is ethnography. It takes a bit longer to get a PhD if you are doing ethnography - 3 years of field work.

Ray...you read my mind. Love those Aliens, but the threads are alive with complaints about customer service and repair times, lack of communication, etc.

Trigger wires are a minimal problem. You should eventually expect trigger wire issues on any small cam and know how to fix them.

The bigger issue with Fixe aliens is the end piece that secures the cams to the axle. mountainproject.com/v/malfu…

Random QC issues aside (as far as I know the Fixe Original Alien design doesn't have endless repetitive issues)

And aside from people with a totem cam boner (myself included)

-CCH Design Fixe Aliens have a greater range over the totem basic cams by 12-15%. It's something thats appreciated in the smaller sizes. (BTW Totem cams have a ~12% greater range over Metolious, so if you're happy with your mastercams it may be no big deal)
-The aliens weigh more than the totems
-The alien set comes with one more cam than the totems (you decide whether thats a +/- for you!)

I have a raging QC and CS boner.

Deidre,
Another couple cams to look at would be the Metolious Master Cam and Black Diamond X4. These are further in design from the old aliens than either the new aliens or the totem basic, but they are definitely close relatives. Both have some pros and cons compared to the aliens and each other, but they all fill the same niche on the rack 99% of the time.

The wild country zeros also look like another member of the same family, but I haven't actually put my hands on those to vouch for it personally.

Thanks :-)