Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I don't review many product that I purchase but I have more than a passing familiarity with the regular use of electric clippers even though I'm not a professional barber. I started cutting my own hair about ten years ago when I was assigned to recruiting duty in a city where the barbers were unionized. Getting a haircut every seven days at twice the price of the barbershop on base was more that I could afford.
I started out using discount store clippers and learned quickly that most were not capable of cutting thick hair or at least not cutting it quickly. The blades for some consumer grade clippers were just terrible and made of stamped metal that warped over time and pulled hair rather than cutting it.
For the past several years I have used Wahl Powerdrive clippers which are consumer grade but significantly better than any others I had tried and lasted for several years. As the Wahl clippers began to wear out I decided to step up to something better as a replacement and decided on the Oster Fast Feed based on the other reviews at Amazon.
The Oster Fast Feed clippers are of very high quality. They are somewhat shorter than most vibrating motor clippers and easy to fit in one's hand. The variable length adjustment makes it easy to effect a taper from very close to 1/8" length without using the guide combs. I concur with the other reviewer who suggested that the slide switch could be replaced with something a little more substantial but it's not a big deal.
The 12 amp pivot motor is about 50% more power than the 8 amp motors in most consumer grade clippers. The power cord is round and heavier than the flat and thin two strand cords on consumer grade clippers.
As long as you are cutting the hair of a homo-sapien the Oster Fast Feed will have the power to cut it at a reasonable speed without pulling. If you really need something that can shear sheep or 100 recruits lined up for their first haircut at Parris Island in under ten minutes then it's probably worth investing in the Oster Classic 76.
The stock blades are very precise and sharp. Conveniently the use Philip's head screws instead of torx or hex head so that you don't need a special screwdriver to disassemble and clean the blades.
One criticism I have of the clipper it is that the blades are not truly zero-overlap closeness. I'm guessing that for most people truly skin tight trim is not a show-stopper for hair clippers and it may not be realistic to expect a set of clippers with adjustable blades to be variable from skin tight to 1/8". I may get a set of T-blade trimmers to supplement this but if I deployed I would just take this clipper by itself.
Another minor point is that it only comes with molded Styrofoam packaging and no hard case. I am using the molded plastic case from my Wahl clippers for the Fast Feed so that I can put it in a seabag or an ammo can and be ready to deploy with it. The clippers need some protection for travel.
Overall, a very good quality set of clippers that I would purchase again. I have no reason to believe that I will not be using them ten years from now.
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Oster Professional 76023-510 Fast Feed Clipper with Adjustable BladeOster's Whisper-Quiet pivot motor is 2x more powerful than a magnetic motor clipper. Optional blade sets are #76913-506 and #76913-536
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