WC Revo vs Silent Partner for solo

I have been soloing using modified grigri or cloves and am looking to step it up but would like a better system. Silent partner is the gold standard but is hard to come by. Has anybody tried the revo as a solo device? I havent held a revo yet but it sounds like the seatbelt locking is sort of similar to the soloist (minus the clove obviously). Unfortunately the revo doesnt have the clip in point for 2 biners, redundancy of the clove hitch and looks easier to disengage the locking than the silent partner but at least it is available. Anyone have any experience with this? Thanks

Searching for "revo soloing" using mproj search results:
lead rope solo review of wild country revo
home testing for rope solo falls: Revo / Eddy / Grigri

Thanks for the links, I have seen those and was wondering if anybody had any more experience with the revo or anything I hadnt considered in my post.

I ordered one, and will test it out and eventually put some info on here.

I have a revo coming today, im gunna go fall on it, ill also post today

Tested it today. Failed miserably!
Didn't hold a fall after it "locked" on a rapid fall. It just released, 3 seperate times, without me touching the rope or device.
Big chunks of aluminum are coming off when the lock is released while weighted. The wheel has play in it and allows it to shift side to side.
The biner hole requires a thick biner to not flex and cause separation between the "tubers" and sideplate.
If the lever is to the left it works much better. With the lever to the right the, now top, tuber has a large gap between it and the side-plate when weighted.
Might be a faulty device. Show manufacture date of March this year and serial number in the low teens.
I will post some pictures later and a better description.
Most likely a defective one..

Floyd Eggers wrote: Tested it today. Failed miserably!
Didn't hold a fall after it "locked" on a rapid fall. It just released, 3 seperate times, without me touching the rope or device.
Big chunks of aluminum are coming off when the lock is released while weighted. The wheel has play in it and allows it to shift side to side.
The biner hole requires a thick biner to not flex and cause separation between the "tubers" and sideplate.
If the lever is to the left it works much better. With the lever to the right the, now top, tuber has a large gap between it and the side-plate when weighted.
Might be a faulty device. Show manufacture date of March this year and serial number in the low teens.
I will post some pictures later and a better description.
Most likely a defective one..

Replying so I'll be notified on new posts, I'd really like to see some pictures of what happened. The revo is a terrible belay device for toprope belaying, and merely a passable device for leading, soloing seemed to be the one saving grace. 

Luke Andraka wrote: I have been soloing using modified grigri or cloves and am looking to step it up but would like a better system. Silent partner is the gold standard but is hard to come by. 

As someone who done thousands of multipitch free lead rope solo pitches over decades on both knots and a modded grigri I would say for my self the SP is anything but a 'gold standard', I rather consider that to be the Edelrid Eddy which I find superior in most all respects compared to any of the other devices on the market and I've tried all of them. The exception being the Revo which I will be testing sometime soon, but it would have to be significantly better than the Eddy for me to switch. But opinions are cheap, people do remarkable ascents on all those other devices and you ultimately have to figure out what works for you.

As soon as I received the Revo I set it up at home to see how amazing it was. After hitting the ground a few times I quickly realized it wasn't the savior I had hoped.The device was Dr Jekyll when falling on the one tuber and Mr Hyde on the other.  
When orientated with the lever on the right side, the tuber on the bottom and the wheel on the left was good. The tuber on top was junk along with the wheel on the right.

Seems the play in the wheel and the bad tuber allowed the device to flex enough to pop off the locking mechanism and take metal along with it. When manually releasing the locked tuber chunks of metal would fly off. It is smoothed down now and no longer holds when locking.
 

Small pieces of metal came off the good tuber as well, but much less than the other.
I used the fattest biner I had to make sure the biner hole was completely filled. This did not fix the issue. Twice the device started to catch a fall, then simply dropped me.
Even with the bad results I went ahead and took it to the mountains with me. The device was inconsistent in catching a fall. I conducted all the falls below a bolt and with as much slack removed as possible. I had a knot 3.5' below the device. Two of the falls hit the knot without the device locking up, and three the device caught (even though two were caught at the knot. The device also locked up randomly while slowly rappelling, very annoying... I did not have the balls to test the wonky tuber side again. I used a 10mm and 10.1mm rope for the tests. I have all the falls on video.
Here is a picture of the tuber separating when loaded. The gap gets worse on a fall and lets the locking mechanism slip off the wheel.

A few other quirks were observed. I am going to send this one back and get a replacement. I will update when I test the replacement.
If you are looking to use it as a solo device, make sure you look for these and other defects before you climb!

That's a fairly concerning report, but my main concern is still the strength of the attachment which looks more fragile than I would prefer for aluminum, but again, I haven't actually had a chance to hold one yet.

Floyd Eggers wrote: 
..

Thanks Floyd for the report.  You have saved me some money.  I was considering getting one but I'll stick with the Eddy for now.  

As a fellow Dark Artist I just want to say I REALLY appreciate this testing. Thank you.

I recently got a Revo and did some test falls and it caught every single one no problem.  I have noticed it does not play well with particularly thick ropes (for example, a fixed gym rope), but on my personal rope everything seemed to work well.  The autolocking does not engage as fast a grigri, and in our tests the climber had to freefall about 4-5 feet before the device locked up (although it is easy to engage the lock by yanking the rope hard, and the device instructions say to do this before each climb to ensure the device is working properly.

Anyways, I am not as experienced as a lot of people on here so take my points with a grain of salt.  Maybe you have a faulty product.  Maybe I'm not testing it rigorously enough.

Floyd Eggers wrote: As soon as I received the Revo I set it up at home to see how amazing it was. After hitting the ground a few times I quickly realized it wasn't the savior I had hoped.The device was Dr Jekyll when falling on the one tuber and Mr Hyde on the other.  
When orientated with the lever on the right side, the tuber on the bottom and the wheel on the left was good. The tuber on top was junk along with the wheel on the right.

Seems the play in the wheel and the bad tuber allowed the device to flex enough to pop off the locking mechanism and take metal along with it. When manually releasing the locked tuber chunks of metal would fly off. It is smoothed down now and no longer holds when locking.
 

Small pieces of metal came off the good tuber as well, but much less than the other.
I used the fattest biner I had to make sure the biner hole was completely filled. This did not fix the issue. Twice the device started to catch a fall, then simply dropped me.
Even with the bad results I went ahead and took it to the mountains with me. The device was inconsistent in catching a fall. I conducted all the falls below a bolt and with as much slack removed as possible. I had a knot 3.5' below the device. Two of the falls hit the knot without the device locking up, and three the device caught (even though two were caught at the knot. The device also locked up randomly while slowly rappelling, very annoying... I did not have the balls to test the wonky tuber side again. I used a 10mm and 10.1mm rope for the tests. I have all the falls on video.
Here is a picture of the tuber separating when loaded. The gap gets worse on a fall and lets the locking mechanism slip off the wheel.

A few other quirks were observed. I am going to send this one back and get a replacement. I will update when I test the replacement.
If you are looking to use it as a solo device, make sure you look for these and other defects before you climb!

Not sure I would assign your test results to all Revo's when you have what appears to be an obviously defective single device. The data would be interesting if other users were reporting similar issues, but since I haven't seen that, I'd me more inclined to consider these outlier reports. Looking forward to hearing how the replacement Revo differs from this one. 

Healyje wrote: That's a fairly concerning report, but my main concern is still the strength of the attachment which looks more fragile than I would prefer for aluminum, but again, I haven't actually had a chance to hold one yet.

They feel solid enough for thin pieces of metal. The problem I have is the plates and tubers seem to be all cast with enough little imperfections to make me question the QA/reliably. The grigri and eddy both have biner holes that feel solidly built into the device, as opposed to onto it like the revo. Hopefully people will post their opinions and findings so we can get a better consensus. 

Floyd Eggers wrote:

Hopefully people will post their opinions and findings so we can get a better consensus. 

lead rope solo review of wild country revo
home testing for rope solo falls: Revo / Eddy / Grigri

WildCountry Revo - First Impressions

home testing for rope solo falls: Revo, Eddy, Grigri (Supertopo responses)
First Look: Wild Country Revo Revamps Assisted Belay (Gearjunkie.com)
Wild Country Revo – A Revolutionary Belay Device (Weightmyrack.com)
Wild Country Revo first impressions (Reddit)
Unboxing and Initial Impressions of the Wild Country Revo (Reddit)
A Tale Of Two Belay Devices: Wild Country Revo Vs Petzl GriGri+ (Dailymotion)
Testing Wild Country's Revo Belay Device (Outside Online)

Iteresting, thanks for the in depth feedback. I got one to try out and it caught me on 5/5 falls before the backup knot. Not saying it is perfect and i definitely fell a hair further than with a gri gri. Didnt get enough time to really play with it before i lost sunlight but these reports give me pause to using it for more serious leads until i play with it some more...

To kevin deweese: thanks but only 3 were from the post recall batch. I am looking for testimonials of climbers using it as opposed to a blogger who saw it at the kiosk. Hearing Luke Andraka, and others, talk about it working is the reason I'm giving it another chance. 

Floyd Eggers wrote: To kevin deweese: thanks but only 3 were from the post recall batch. I am looking for testimonials of climbers using it as opposed to a blogger who saw it at the kiosk. Hearing Luke Andraka, and others, talk about it working is the reason I'm giving it another chance.

There was no Revo recall. MEC voluntarily recalled the ones they sold but Wild Country never initiated a recall. 

kevin deweese wrote:

There was no Revo recall. MEC voluntarily recalled the ones they sold but Wild Country never initiated a recall. 

You're right. It was over quality issues though wasn't it? Wasn't the delay for the same reason? Seems like the problem I have. 

Floyd Eggers wrote:

You're right. It was over quality issues though wasn't it? Wasn't the delay for the same reason? Seems like the problem I have. 

You've def got a device with QA issues and I'm hoping Wild Country makes good for you. I obviously got lucky that my Revo came in perfect working order (considering it's more than you that have had some issues according the various posts I've seen) but I guess that's karma making it up to me for my time in the Cinch/Vergo barrel. 

Nate Tastic wrote:
Perhaps you got one of those by mistake.

All those were Canadian, I wonder if there's a batch number of Revo's specifically released to Canada or whether Wild Country just batches production for North America.