Note: Our site links to archery and bowhunting products sold by outside vendors, and we may earn a small commission if you purchase an item after clicking one of these links. Learn more about our affiliate program.
What does CBE stand for, you ask? Is it “Commander of the British Empire”? “Cross Bronx Expressway”? Maybe “Compound Bow Excellence”?
Nope! “CBE” stands for “Custom Bow Equipment,” and we’re big fans. They make some *really* deluxe archery / bowhunting equipment, and while they’re not for everyone—a lot of their gear is REALLY high end, and we would consider many of their pieces to be “an investment”—if you can swing it, they’ve got some really fantastic models.
In this post, we’ll offer our CBE Tek Hybrid review. We’ve got a lot of nice things to say about it, and while it’s not perfect (and we’ll voice our minor grievances below), it’s a pretty darn good bow sight. We’ll start with an overview and then get into the details:
SUMMARY: CBE TEK HYBRID BOW SIGHT
- Micro adjustable blade style sight pins
- Hybrid elevation adjustment
- Micro adjustable windage with clicks
The CBE Tek Hybrid, in our most humble of opinions, is a fantastic bow sight for bow hunters and 3-D shooters. There’s a lot to like here, and perhaps more than anything else, the Tek Hybrid offers incredible micro-adjustability on all 3 axes, so you can test and tune for near and far shots on flat ground, but also from tree stands, blinds, and various weird angles. It’s made from some really high-tech materials (Delrin / polyoxymethylene, and we’ll explain that below) to a high degree of manufacturing certainty/preciseness (which, really, is what we look for on high-end archery gear), and while it may take a while to tune, it can offer accuracy beyond most of the bow sights out there. It can work great for target archers, but there are plenty of other high-end, capable bow sights make specifically for target shooting that we’d suggest instead (and the 3rd axis capability on the Tek Hybrid probably isn’t necessary for target shooters anyway). It’s also not a great pick for new archers—tuning it (especially tuning it to the 2nd and 3rd axes) takes a little know-how. All in all, though, a tremendous bow sight, and one we’re happy to recommend.
Alright, now let’s dive into the details.
The Tek Hybrid: What Makes It Unique (and What the Features Mean)
The funny thing about the CBE Tek Hybrid is that some of the features are so high-tech, we need to explain—very clearly—what they actually mean. You can read the marketing material for this bow sight and have no idea what any of it does. So we’ll help you “de-code” some of the features, and hopefully we’ll able to teach you the qualities you want to look for in a well-made bow sight, while we do so.
The Design Incorporates a Dovetail Mounting System, Which Means…
…basically that you can mount the sight in different positions on your riser and find what works for you. There are 4 sets of holes, so you can test each and figure which position works for your distinct shot cycle.
That’s a nice design feature—very often, we get so obsessed with the adjustability of the pins, the housing, etc.—that we forget the larger issue of sight placement. This feature isn’t really unique to the Tek Hybrid, but it’s good to have.
It Features a Hybrid Elevation Adjustment System, and THAT Means…
Honestly, we can only give you our best guess on this one, because the marketing material doesn’t really say specifically what the “Hybrid Elevation System” actually is. We’re not sure what’s “hybrid” about it, but we *think* that CBE is referring to the option you have on a Tek Hybrid to adjust individual pins one at a time, or to adjust all of the pins at once.
If that’s what they’re talking about—and the Tek Hybrid does, in fact, have both of those functions—then we give it a thumbs up! It’s obviously pretty important to be able to adjust individual pins, but it’s also great to be able to adjust all of your pins at once, and if you have a 3-pin version set at 10/20/30 yards, and want to adjust it to 20/30/40 yards, you can adjust them all at once, and that can save you a lot of time (although, obviously, you’ll want to fine tune each pin afterward).
Anyway, if that’s what they’re referring to (and CBE, you need to make this stuff a little more clear!), it’s a great feature.
The Bow Sight is Manufactured in 1-Pin, 3-Pin, and 5-Pin Options
OK! Finally. This feature is a little easier to explain, and you probably know what it means: CBE manufactures the bow sight with a single pin (and we must admit, we don’t know much about the single-pin option, so we’re going to forego commenting on it, and would instead direct you to our HHA Optimizer Lite Bow Sight review, which is similar), but the 3-pin is great for setting at 10/20/30 or 20/30/40 yards, and the 5-pin is great for pretty much anything from 10 to 80 yards and possibly more.
Pin selection is up to you. Some folks like having 5 pins and all the distance shooting options 5 pins can give to you; other folks think that having 5 pins makes the bow sight seem a little “busy” and distracting, and so those folks make due with 3 pins. The one thing that’s almost always true is that if you’re shooting at game that’s far away—and much of the time, that’s true for bow hunters in the Western United States (but not always, of course), then a 5-pin bow sight can be great option.
It Has a Quad Track Design That Utilizes Delrin Tracks… Um, What?
OK, so this is yet another “What does that actually mean?” feature. The CBE website does an *OK* job at explaining this feature, but here’s how it breaks down:
“Delrin” is the name of thermoplastic product made by Dupont Chemical. It’s “real” generic name is polyoxymethylene, and it’s used in everything from wheels to gears to ball bearings to a whole bunch of other things. Delrin is a really incredible substance—it’s used in all sorts of high-end precision parts, because it allows parts to move against each other *very closely,* while at the same time not creating a lot of friction.
So you can imagine why it’s a really cool thing that CBE uses Delrin on the Tek Hybrid. It allows the parts of the Tek Hybrid to fit together veeeeery snugly, and CBE uses Delrin in the Quad Track—the part of the sight that allows you to adjust the elevation of your bow sight (that is, the part of the bow sight that allows you to adjust the up/down setting on the bow sight)—so that you can adjust the elevation of the sight to high degree of accuracy.
Basically, the Delrin material in the bow sight allows you to make very minute adjustment to the bow sight, so that you can shoot more accurately.
With that in mind, let’s finally get to a feature of the Tek Hybrid that’s a little easier to grasp:
The Sight is REALLY Micro-Adjustable
…and you can fine-tune it to a degree that you just can’t do on a lower-tier bow sight.
That micro-adjustability is one of the features that separates the good bow sights from the very good bow sights, so, while it’s a great feature on the TEK Hybrid, we can’t really give them extra points for it—micro adjustability is simply a requirement on a high-end bow sight. It’s the only way to *truly* sight in your bow. Lower-tier bow sights don’t have that functionality, and while you can test and test and test and many of them will perform for you, you’re still just guessing, really. In order to truly sight in a bow sight, you need micro-adjustability and demarcations on the windage and the elevation, which the Hybrid has.
And that’s a good segue in our CBE Tek Hybrid review to discuss how…
It’s Made for Shots from Tree Stands, Towers, and Odd Angles
This is another one of those features that bow sight manufacturers advertise in a unique way: when they say that you can “make adjustments to the 2nd and 3rd axes,” what they really mean is that the bow sight has the highest degree of tunability, and you can even tune it so that you can shoot down at targets from tree stands, the top of hills, and various weird angles that normal target archers don’t usually need to shoot from. That makes the bow sight great for hunting and for 3-D shooting.
Most bow sights don’t allow you to adjust it so that you can shoot from heights, but the high-end ones do, and so does the Tek Hybrid.
By the way, a full discussion of the 1st axis, 2nd axis, and 3rd axis is beyond the scope of this post, but you can read about all 3 axes here. They do a pretty good job of discussing a complicated topic.
You Can Micro-Adjust One Pin at a Time
This is neat: you can lock all the pins, and then after you’ve locked all of them, you can select one, unlock it, and then move it. That’s neat, and it allows you to do some “detail” work.
It’s Manufactured in .019″ and .010″ Blade Pins
None of this .029″ nonsense on the Tek Hybrid! Only the best for all your CBE users. The Hybrid is manufactured in .019″ thickness and .010″ thickness, and that choice is up to you.
The really nice thing about the pins on the Hybrid is that they’re less like pins than they are flat plates, and that gives them a little extra heft, and you can see if one of them isn’t totally flat. You can give it a quick glance and see if one of the pins is askew, and that’s wonderful—there’s not too much about bow sights that you can look at quickly and ascertain if it’s “off” or not.
TEK Features That Need a Little Attention
Honestly, this is a fantastic bow sight, and there’s not much to hate on it. We would offer one word of caution, however:
It’s Not a Great Option for Beginners
There’s only one real “con” we have. We’d love to recommend it for new archers and bowhunters, but we just don’t think it’s a good option if you’re just starting out—and we’ve met a looooot of folks over the years who are willing to spend plenty without much experience in archery or bowhunting. And that’s just not necessary, really. There’s a LOT you need to know in order to shoot well, and there’s a lot to learn about gear.
And the TEK Hybrid could be considered a little complicated for a newbie. There’s just too much that you need to do in order to get it tuned, and too much you need to know—and if you look at how much we needed to explain in the review above, you’ll probably see what we mean. New archers don’t really have an understand of all those features, or why they’re important. Talk of the 2nd and 3rd axes are a good example of that—those can be tricky concepts that take a little while to learn.
Also, imagine trying to micro-tune this puppy when you’re don’t really know how to set a bow sight—it would be very frustrating! In our most humble of opinions, this model should be for advanced beginners / intermediates / experts who know their way around a bow sight. Newer archers might want to consider something like the Trophy Ridge React Bow Sight, which has a lot of the same functionality, but is far easier to use.
- REACT TECHNOLOGY: Five .019" horizontal-pin sight featuring the innovative React Technology
- INCREASED STABILITY: Reduces vibration while maintaining light-weight strength with Ballistix CoPolymer System
- ENHANCED VISIBILITY: Adjust brightness to suit any shooting condition with the rheostat light
Bringing All That Together
We hope that provides some clarity, and as we wrap up our CBE Tek Hybrid review, we’ll once again say: we think this is a fantastic bow sight, and designed for great precision, but probably not a great pick for new archers and/or novice bowhunters. For those of you with some experience with bow sights, this one has a lot of potential.
Alright! Thanks for reading, and all the best to you.
- Micro adjustable blade style sight pins
- Hybrid elevation adjustment
- Micro adjustable windage with clicks
