Review: BoS Cable Tower

Review: BoS Cable Tower

Review: Bells of Steel Cable Tower x2

I purchased two of these after doing a lot of research and reading other reviews on this sub.

My criteria was as follows: - I’m a pretty tall guy (6’5”) and was particularly focused on making sure that the height of the equipment itself matched as closely as the highest hole. - I opted for the weight stack vs loadable. I went this route after considering the cost of purchasing additional plates and the amount of time it would take to just move things around didn’t make sense. It’s a purchase I wanted to have around for a long time, and I wanted to do it right. - I wanted separate towers because again, as a tall guy, the functional trainers just didn’t accommodate my wingspan to get a good stretch on flies. - I wanted either standalone or wall mount. I have a rogue R-3 that I bought in 2016, and since rogue doesnt do jack for Infinity accessories, rack mount was out.

MY EXPERIENCE: - SHIPPING: Kind of a pain in the ass. The tracking is via FedEx, but it's contracted out and i couldnt get a hold of the shipper. I needed to make some delivery timing adjustments, and ultimately just ended up waiting until they contacted me. Overall this is pretty minor and i dont knock BoS for this. Total delivery took about 2wks. - UNBOXING: the machines themselves come in two big boxes and they were a breeze to open. The weight stacks are wrapped in individual boxes with 5 weights (50lbs), and each weight is individually wrapped in plastic inside the box. On one hand, I love the attention to detail and the car they put in to it. There was zero damage to any of the product. On the other hand, what a pain in the ass to individually unwrap 400 lbs of weights! Ha! - ASSEMBLY: I wasn’t looking forward to this after reading what folks had described as a difficult process. Honestly, I didn’t need to watch the video until it got to installing the cables, and the video for the cable installation was excellent. If you have even an ounce of handiness, you’ll be fine. Only thing that I got wrong was installing the bolts on the handles backwards… and if you don’t install them the correct direction, then they impede the handle range of motion. I tried to include a picture here so you can see what I mean. Took me all of 5 min to fix this though. All in, it took me probably 2-3hrs? I didn’t time it… so that’s just a guess. - MOUNTING: I ran a 2x6 ledger board with 8x 4” lag bolts drilled in to studs. I mounted the cable towers to the ledger board with 2x 3” lag bolts. If I could go back and do it again, I’d probably use thicker lag bolts (maybe 1/2”) and I’d definitely get bigger washers. But whatever, these are rock solid even if I row with max weight. No mounting to the floor required. - USAGE: the pulleys are super high quality. I did lube them up because there was some inconsistency at lower (<30lb) weights. No issues since then. I also find that the low row on this is a breeze as long as you don’t care about sitting on the ground. The feet make perfect anchors. Lastly, I did purchase some swivel carabiners for the 1:1 attachment because there was some torque on the MAG attachments that I didn’t like. Those cost me an extra $15 apiece, but that was just personal preference. If I had a criticism for the build, it’s that the pin for the weight stack is close enough to the pulleys that it’s just sort of annoying, and I also wish the holes on the pole were numbered. Minor inconveniences, but also things that I think would be easy improvements for BoS to implement.

In conclusion, I couldn’t recommend these enough. I don’t have anything else to compare them to, but if you’re looking for a really high quality build, these are fantastic. Thanks to this community for all of the help in helping me choose!