Scott Redfern
Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2015
I owned an old Body Solid EXM-1100 for over a decade and it finally broke, so I decided it was time to build a new exercise room and get a new gym to go in it. I looked at other brands but I had great faith in Body Solid because of how well-made my old one was and that one was a low-cost one for tight space areas.The deal is great to buy online and I saved a TON over buying it locally where the store would deliver it and assemble it for you. Beware however that the instructions are crude given how much work is involved in the assembly. I got a palate shipped to me with 12-15 boxes weighing a total of about 1,200 pounds. Once I opened them all there were easily 1,000 parts including all of the nuts, bolts and screws, and the instructions are wordless pictures on about 20 pages of paper. It took me about a week with periodic work in the evenings and on weekends. I had to guess on a few assembly areas because there were no pictures for a few items.I have been using it for about 2 months now and I LOVE it! The gym works extremely well and I am very finnicky about the movement of a gym and this one is very good.A few things to consider:* Wipe down and oil your weight plates and the bars they slide on immediately. There is a lot of friction as you assemble it and it doesn't feel right but as soon as you oil the bar and inside of the weight plate holes they slide into they begin to slide without any friction.* The one exercise I do not care for is the shoulder press. It is not natural and a seat that forces you to lean forward is not a good way to isolate your deltoids.* Don't try to peel the plastic protector sheet off the Body Solid logo plate. I thought it came of and it does not so now it looks real crappy half peeled. :-(
St. Charles
Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2014
I will start off that Body Solid has excellent customer service. I called Scott twice and he bailed me out twice with parts correction of my missteps in assembly. They have to...this was made in China and BS never sees what is inside the box.Amazon and BS are fools for using ABF as a carrier. My order visited 3 cities in Illinois, Dallas, Little Rock, KC and finally to Springfield, MO where it was supposed to be. ABF customer service was "so what" like that is their normal logistics. I could have had the product in 3 days but it took 2 weeks because of their terrible service. The pallet and boxes where in horrible condition from the Midwest tour.Back to parts and directions. Parts do not match up and the counts are way off from what the list says. Like wise, part numbers do not match what the directions say. I had a bag of bolts left and I also had to make several trips to the hardware store to get the correct size for assembly. BS website directions are different than the enclosed directions and neither are spot on. Thus the excellent customer service by phone. You need will need it.I would not order this product again. The leg station is set up for 200 lbs. I need to meet that person who can leg curl and leg lift 200. I should have save my money and ordered a machine without the leg station.
Alex C. Cullison
Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2013
My unit is wonderfully designed. It is comfortable. Unfortunately I have had two weld failures. Both weld failures have been on seat brackets. The company was unresponsive and unsympathetic to the problem. I had to pay a commercial welder to repair.
PJ
Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2010
Very very high quality item- we are quite pleased with it. A few small parts were missing. You can call Body Solid directly and they will ship them free via UPS ground or you can pay for faster delivery. I recommend checking the inventory when it arrives. It's worth the time investment up front, despite there being hundreds of parts. First, make sure you have 4 shaft collars to go atop the weight stack, as this will delay setup, and you will want to get them asap. We only had 2. Everything was VERY well packed. A few hints: plan on spending a few hours unpacking it from the pallett. You will need a very big empty space in your garage for delivery and a boxcutter and wirecutter. The delivery service was great- polite delivery guys and the item arrived a day early. To assist set up, when checking inventory, put the small parts in piles and label the piles, as you will be accessing some of the smaller ones (bolts, etc) over and over & some look alike. The directions are not hard to follow & are very detailed drawings- not verbal directions. Beware: they combine metric and standard sizing. We found out after we ordered that you can order directly from Body Solid's partner company (forget the name but BS owns both-call them). Otherwise, BS only deals with retailers, but they match any online price. We would recommend this, as their customer service staff has been great, or using Amazon, LLC like we did. We had no problems at all with Amazon. We did have problems with the secondary marketplace seller we ordered an add on from, but that's another story. Use Amazon or Body Solid's partner company- trust me. Overall, we are very happy with this gym. It really is commercial quality. If it helps to know, since it's hard to find them to try out, it will work for a very tall person. My hubby is 6 foot 3, and it will give him a good range of motion. I hope this helps!