I’ve been having a problem trying to decide which of the two bows I own which I am willing to part with, either the used Mathews LX I bought from a coworker, or the Martin Cheetah that I found with an unbeatable price tag that I could not pass up.
After tuning the Cheetah to get rid of the idler lean and tightening of the cam module which I found loose along with the loose Sims S-Coil, the sound difference was about night and day. I got the idea of comparing the sound loudness compared to my Mathews LX. So I made a quick box target stuffed with a comforter my wife hates, and started recording shots taken from each one.
Here are the results:
As you can see, they are very close. The Mathews was shot first, and Martin second.
Pretty close… so here is Martin Cheetah in pink, overlaying over Mathews LX sound recordings:
It may be worth noting, that I stood in the exact same place shooting the exact same arrow for each recording.
I find this relatively interesting considering the price differences between the two bows, and they have close to the same specs.
if you care to here the difference, click here for an mp3 of the two samples above.