My best tamper so far (and I owned 5 in the past). Perfect balance and weight.
Positive Product Points
Design, fit and finish, quality of materials and workmanship, packaging.
Negative Product Points
Still unable to find one.
Detailed Commentary
The Bumber tamper is really something. I own Reg Barber and older Bumper (1st generation) that I bought last year on second-hand market.
This (I call it Ver 2.0) tamper is slightly different than older Bumper type, for better. The piston is now shorter (doesn't stick by much from the basket, anymore), and much closer to my Reg Barber piston. Also the convex curve is slightly less enhanced than on previous model. His Ver 1.0 had almost Euro-curve convex shape, the Ver 2.0 is now "sitting" between the standard Us and Euro curve.
It fits perfectly my single basket tamping routine, where I dose the PF with a slight bump in the middle then use Bumber tamper's enhanced convex bottom to compress the grind per my own single-basket dosing/tamping method. This has finaly produced a 'perfect' single basket extraction I was after for a very long time. I also have a curved e61 shower screen installed, so the whole setup fits my extraction technique quite nicely.
My Bumper tamper is steel base + traditional aluminium handle combo, basicaly the same shape of the tamper you see on WBC logo. It won't fit all tamping styles, it's better for flat-palm tamping style and longer hand/fingers. Shape wise it's similar to a cheaper aluminium pro-barista tamper I owned some time ago, but this one blows its socks off.
The tamper comes disasembled in a great little box, piston in its rubber stand is packed at the bottom, insulated from the handle and S/S screw packed at the top. Once screwed in place you have a feeling the tamper was machined from a single piece of metal, as there are no visible joints or edges between the piston and handle. The finish is satin brushed, and reflects the light like no S/S tampers I owned in the past.
The round rubber tamper stand is a great bonus as well. You can now purchase these as spare part on their own. A must have for any serious barista kitchen setup :)
Buying Experience
Great, Paul is awesome to deal with. He machines the tamper per-order, which is great IMO. No drop-shipping, he makes and inspects the product before he ships it to you.
