I’ve been using the REP Fitness Stainless Steel Black Diamond Power Bar for a few months, and this has become my favorite bar to use among the ones that I own, and that purely comes down to the knurling. It’s provided me with just the right amount of bite when doing pushing exercises like the bench press, and it grips very well when it’s sitting on me, like during a barbell squat. However, there are times that I feel like I want more, and that’s during pulling exercises like barbell rows and deadlifts. That’s where the REP Fitness Double Black Diamond Power Bar comes into play.
In terms of specs, these two bars are identical. The only difference is the knurling. Whereas the Black Diamond has what REP calls “Deep Volcano / Aggressive,” the Double Black Diamond has “Deep Mountain / Very Aggressive.” When I made my original purchase, I went with the Black Diamond because I was worried that the Double Black Diamond would be too much. That’s because of the Giant Fitness Northland Open Trap Bar that I own. That thing has the most aggressive knurling I’ve ever felt, and every couple of workouts with it, it’ll rip a chunk of callus off, which just slows my entire workout split down because I can barely grip after that. I didn’t want to deal with that here and went with the Black Diamond.
But after owning this, I do find myself thinking that maybe I want a little bit more. This particular Black Diamond is the stainless steel option, which is going to give us the most tactile response in terms of feeling the knurling. It is just bare metal with nothing on it, so we really get to understand the knurling. And because of that, I almost exclusively only buy stainless steel bars. I only own one barbell that’s not stainless steel, and that is the bar that I bought for visitors to use when they come to my gym so they don’t mess up the good stuff.
But for my purchase of the Double Black Diamond, again I was worried that it may be too aggressive, and that could potentially be the case if I bought the stainless steel version. So I made the decision to go with the Cerakote option because Cerakote is an additive process. This is a coating that’s applied to the metal and physically adds a layer of thickness to it. In terms of the knurling, Cerakote can fill in the knurling a bit, making it less aggressive than it would be without it. So if we were to look at the knurling in terms of a scale of aggressiveness between the Black Diamond and Double Black Diamond bars, you’d have Cerakote Black Diamond as the least aggressive, then Stainless Steel Black Diamond, then Cerakote Double Black Diamond, and finally Stainless Steel Double Black Diamond as the most aggressive.
In person, I would say that’s accurate, at least with my two samples. The Cerakote Double Black Diamond is a bump up from the Stainless Steel Black Diamond in terms of knurling aggressiveness. It’s nothing crazy, and upon first impressions, I would say that I wouldn’t mind switching to it for everyday use. I actually think that I like it more than the stainless steel Black Diamond. I can already tell that it’s not crazy over-the-top aggressive and doesn’t just rip your skin off all the time. But again, that’s just first impressions. I’ll have to report back in the future.
That being said, I do want to share that my Double Black Diamond is the worst condition bar that I’ve ever received. There’s a list of things wrong with it. First, during shipping, for some reason the person packaging this bar didn’t feel the need to reinforce one of the ends of the shipping tube and just taped it up. This, of course, allowed the bar to move, and one of the ends ended up slightly damaged. From there, we move on to the black Duracoat sleeves, which have the most terrible, inconsistent coating I’ve ever seen, possibly on any product. It’s super spotty and looks awful. The red Cerakote is better, but not that great. In person, I can see that certain areas of the Cerakote are glossier than others. So again, it’s inconsistent. This bar looks so bad, and I’m sure this isn’t representative of all of them, but it has certainly deterred me from buying another Cerakote or Duracoat bar from REP. From now on, I’ll probably just stick to their stainless steel bars.
So to sum things up, if you want an opinion on the Black Diamond line of bars from REP, the single Black Diamond in stainless steel is a good all-around bar, no doubt about it. But for my personal taste, even as someone who doesn’t like super aggressive knurling that tears your hands up, I think the Double Black Diamond in Cerakote is better. In my short time with it, I already like it more for everyday use, and again, I don’t think it’s overly aggressive. So the logical next question would be, how aggressive is the Stainless Steel Double Black Diamond bar? Is it really that bad? Personally, just from my experience with my two bars, I’m willing to bet it’s not, but unfortunately, I don’t think I’m willing to fund another $400 bar when I already have some good options here.
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