1 (edited by basilisk120 2016-03-10 18:01:44)

Topic: Taegeuk Horn bow versus the SMG

I was able to get a Taeguek Horn bow http://www.koreanbow.com/shop/index.php … ;id_lang=1 recently and thought I would compare it to my SMG bow. 

Both bows are 50# bows @ 31 inches.  The Taeguek is 49 inches long and the SMG is the 50 inch version. 


The picture gallery is: http://imgur.com/a/IANAl

Both bows strung, the SMG has the blue handle and the Taeguek the orange
http://imgur.com/CeFE8wE
The SMG has a slightly lower brace height

And unstrung
http://imgur.com/X9BILaH
Here you can see that the Taeguek is a little shorter.  It also has a slightly more shape to the limb

Fit and finish. 
Both are well made bows but the Taeguek has a few little things that give it the edge here.  Such as the decorations above and below the grip, which comes finished. 
http://imgur.com/dTXjuP8
The SMG is a bit lighter in the hand Taeguek.  I didn't have a scale handy to weight the exact difference but its small but noticeable. 

Shooting the bow
This is a bit of a personal feel but I liked the SMG more than the Taeguek.  The SMG felt a bit lighter during the draw.  I believe that the limb shape lets the Taeguek load earlier and with the shorter limb and my long draw gave a touch of stacking at the end.  Both were smooth on the release with no hand shock, as expected.  If I didn't have the SMG to compare it to the Taeguek would be the smoothest drawing bow I own. 

Speed. 
After all of this I broke out my chronograph to answer the burning question of which is faster.  The answer is the SMG by a hair.  Both bows were shooting in the 180 to 190 fps  with my bamboo arrows, dropping some outliers.  The SMG was averaging on the high side of that and the Taeguek on the low to middle side.  But to be honest the chronograph was showing I need to work on my form, I was getting more variation on speeds with the same arrow than I would like.  So the above speeds were taken after my form had settled down a bit.  I will revisit this in the future but I don't think the basic idea will change much.

So the TL;DR version
Both bows are are great bows and there isn't one thing that really separates them other than price.

Edit to add:  If your looking for a horn bow the Taeguek is a great bow with out the hassle that can accompany a horn bow.  If you just want a great bow to shoot the SMG is a great choice.  The differences in the bows is basically splitting hairs.

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Re: Taegeuk Horn bow versus the SMG

Very interesting. Thank you.

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3 (edited by Mule 2016-03-13 00:18:12)

Re: Taegeuk Horn bow versus the SMG

The SMG comes with snake skin?!

>Both bows were shooting in the 180 to 190 fps  with my bamboo arrows, dropping some outliers.

How heavy are your arrows?

>Edit to add:  If your looking for a horn bow the Taeguek is a great bow with out the hassle that can accompany a horn bow.  If you just want a great bow to shoot the SMG is a great choice.  The differences in the bows is basically splitting hairs.

Or get the SMG horn tongue

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Re: Taegeuk Horn bow versus the SMG

Mule wrote:

The SMG comes with snake skin?!

It is a snake skin pattern printed on leather. Not sure why it one this bow but I'm happy with it and it looks good.   


Mule wrote:

How heavy are your arrows?

I will double check when I get home.  But they are 32 inches with 125 grain points.  So I'm thinking around 525 grains. 

Mule wrote:

Or get the SMG horn tongue

  True :-)

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Re: Taegeuk Horn bow versus the SMG

The SMG is from koreanbow? Nice

Re: Taegeuk Horn bow versus the SMG

I like that snake skin imitation... ugh I want one but. yeah bows more bows more bows!

There's a 51" version, the janggung, a bit longer than the 50" junggung that they sell on koreanbow.com.
Thinking the janggung could accomodate my 33" draw..