edwards custom upgrades

what's in a name.......

Edwards Custom Upgrades - the early years of experimentation.....

It all started for me doing a few tweaks to old bite alarms for my own fishing. I soon found out that when other anglers saw what I had done to my old Optonics (these were from the early 90s) they wanted me to refurbish theirs to the same standard. And it wasn't only Optonics - I had also had worked on the Delkim and Bamford conversions as well as alarms from Fox.

I was doing work on all of them, from LED changes, to internal speaker tweaks, repairing battery connections, right through to full casing restores and milling in isotope slots. I was experimenting and enjoying the result of what I was able to achieve with alarms that were broken or just plain old. The lessons learned from working with these old alarms inspired me to build my own and pour all my knowledge and experience of carp fishing into it. 

The work was time consuming - and didn't make much money - but it was worth it for the buzz I got from the anglers using alarms I had restored or upgraded. At the same time - and unknown to me - anglers all over the country were starting to have faith in my name and the ECU label. I was building a reputation.

Those repairs and upgrades became known as ECU-stamped or ECU-upgraded, and the belief and faith customers showed in my early work still drives Edwards Custom Upgrades today. Along the way I've kept talking to customers (some have become friends) and those personal relationships - along with my passion for carp fishing - will always be at the heart of any products I create. 

Coming from an Ministry of Defence electronics background (I used to make safety anti-stall switches for British Tornadoes) and having had metalwork experience (working on MOD laser guided Paveway missile systems) I was soon experimenting with stainless steel. I did swan neck buzzer bars first, before going on to do a limited number of DMX Snag Pods, both of which have become sought-after and hard to find products. 

But I kept coming back to bite alarms and what it would be like to build one from scratch. So I made a difficult choice and stopped stainless steel machining to start working on prototype bite alarms. It's taken five long years from concept creation but the new MK1 compact remote bite alarms have finally been released and I'm delighted with them. I think you will be too.

I've travelled a long road to get to this point and am looking forward to seeing what happens next. I'm sure the Edwards Custom Upgrades story will continue as new products are released (when I'm ready to release them) so let's enjoy the journey along the way...

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