Q: “My bow seems loud or noisy. How can I make it shoot more quietly?”

A: We have done a lot of testing in the area of bow noise and the bottom line is that when a bow reaches a certain level of performance it makes more noise. However, by testing our bows using a dosimeter to measure the decibel levels, we have concluded that just because a certain bow sounds louder it is not necessarily the case. What makes a difference in most cases is the “tone” of the bow. Bows with a higher pitch or tone are displeasing to the ear, therefore sound louder than others. There are other reasons for bow noise such as arrows that are too light in mass weight or mis-spined, bow arm interference, worn gloves or tabs, etc. Other reasons are related to the bow itself, usually in the setup. We recommend specific brace heights for each model of our bows that are higher than some folks are used to, but have been tested and proven to be very effective. We have also recommended that you keep a rubber tip protector on the lower limb (for other obvious reasons) and use 4 of the Spyder silencers which still weigh less than 2 cat whisker type silencers and do as good silencing the bow in most cases. We also have found that when strings are worn out, they will cause the bow to become louder.