WHY PLASTIC HOLDS SUCK

Plastic is an insulator, it can't remove heat from your hands. This is the reason behind the popular perception that plastic holds "burn" the hands. They really do.

Plastic has no "built in" texture. The stuff is smooth as glass. The only texture that a plastic hold has comes from the mold. If you feel the back of a plastic hold you will know what I am talking about. Plastic texture is smooth, greasy feeling, and the absolute last thing you would want as a handhold. To give a plastic hold good friction, it needs to have a sharp, skin-ripping texture.

Plastic is relatively soft. To keep plastic holds from polishing quickly they need an aggressive texture. Most hold companies use hard, open-cell foam masters to provide the shape and texture of the hold. Foam texture resists polishing but is particularly hard on the skin.

Plastic holds get caked with chalk. Again, the main reason for this is the foam texture. There is lots of holes to get filled in with chalk.

Plastic holds spin. The backs of plastic holds are smooth. You need to really crank them down to keep them from spinning. This is hard on your T-nuts, and leads to broken holds.

WHY PLASTIC SHAPES SOMETIMES SUCK

Because most plastic hold companies use foam masters, a good percentage of holds end up with shapes that are uncomfortable. You can't climb on a foam master and you can't tell if a hold is good or not until you climb on it. The hold maker isn't going to know what the hold will feel like until he makes the final mold and casts the hold. If the shape sucks, there really isn't any way to fix it.

With SYNROCK holds, we use SYNROCK itself as the hold master. We can climb on the shape and fine tune it before we make an expensive final mold.