Review on Casablanca 59164 Contemporary Stealth Ceiling by Danielle Roberts

I bought a Casablanca Stealth fan 20 years ago. That was back when Casablanca was still a real company and not just a trademark like it is today. At one point, Hunter bought Casablanca, selling their entire product line and co-opting the use of the Casablanca name so they could continue to charge Casablanca's high quality prices to essentially low-quality Hunter fans. I don't remember the exact price I paid for this original Casablanca Stealth, but it was twice what garden strain lovers were expecting at the time. I don't mind because this vintage fan is just a joy to look at and use. The processing quality corresponds to the price. It is certainly a fine mechanism that operates with absolute precision, with no significant wobble or imbalance problems at any speed. It still works just as perfectly as when new. And it's been running non-stop since its inception! Its wall switch box is also of high quality, the Mercedes switchgear can be felt on it. I'm sorry to talk about what stealth used to be, but it begs a comparison to what stealth has become. The current "Stealth" is an extremely cheap counterfeit of the original. It is similar in structure, but this is the only connection between them. The original comes in literally hundreds of different color and texture combinations, while the current model only comes in two. I chose vanilla (white). When I took a new one out of the box, I immediately noticed that it weighed slightly less than the original. Its body is now fairly thin stamped metal, painted satin white, while the original body was either molded or much thicker metal and powder coated with a nice white crinkled finish. The original fan blades are made from cherry wood, while the new ones have a gloss white finish so can be made of anything. The light in the original was a small 100w halogen bulb which I recently replaced with a nice 5000k LED. Unfortunately, the new device has built-in LED chips that emit a distinctly yellowish hue somewhere around 3000K. Assembling and Mounting The new unit ran as smoothly as any other Hunter fan, with one caveat: the fan blades of several other Hunter fans I've recently assembled and installed had a fairly secure mechanical arrangement in their mounts. That is, the blades are forced to locate their position when attached to their mounts. This is a key feature when assembling what is essentially a flywheel. As the fan spins, build accuracy is very important to maintain the dynamic balance needed to prevent oscillation at all speeds. Other Hunter fans had this feature, but "Casablanca Stealth" didn't. The Asian factory perfectly copied the size of the holes in the original fan blades, but failed to provide the metal mounting sleeves that take up the space between the larger holes in the blades and the much smaller mounting screws. This leaves some play in the mounts, which is an obvious no-no. I compensated by pulling out all the blades before tightening the mounting screws, but ok. This leads me to believe that it was the bean counters, not the engineers, who copied and made this fan. Another tip: when I turned on the new fan, it wobbled horribly at any speed (there are six) above 1. One way Hunter keeps the cost of their fans down is by skipping a few steps in their design and manufacturing processes, and then trying to compensate for that fact by including a balance kit with each fan. The original Casablanca fans did not come with balancing kits as they did not skip these steps and therefore tape was not required. The balance kits that the Hunter includes will compensate for the wobble as long as it's not too much. Let's say if this fan ran smoothly up to level 5 or 6, then maybe a kit could help. And the fan that starts to oscillate in the second stage? no Something was really wrong here. The "Stealth" design has cast metal tips attached to the outer ends of the blades. Remember my flywheel analogy? The only place on the fan that affects balance the most is at the tips of the blades, and this fan (and the original fan) has metal castings installed there! So I removed the weights from the tips and weighed them to the nearest tenth of a gram on an accurate scale. Four of the five weights weighed about 60 grams. Fifth? 45 grams! All of the weights/tips appeared to be visually identical castings, but this light weight could be identified blindfolded by simply holding each weight in your hand. It had to be made from a different metal. Quality control doesn't seem to be a big priority at the manufacturing facility. Luckily, when I contacted Hunter, they immediately sent me new tips. The new ones were all the same weight, so I installed them and tried the fan again. Now I didn't swing to 5 speeds. He grinds his teeth. I then spent a whole day trying in vain to get this fan to run as smoothly as my original (no issues, no hesitation) Stealth. Eventually I got it to the point where it has a slight wobble at speed 6 where it still won't start as it's moving so much air it'll probably never see 5. However, the balance kit comes with sticky weights that are made out of dark brown plastic. Attached to the top of an all-white fan blade mounted to a low ceiling, this near-black weight on my sleek supersteel Stealth is visible from most places in the room. And it's distracting. The new Stealth's wearable remote control features logically arranged and easy-to-use buttons for all fan functions, as well as a non-slip coating. It is flat on the back so it can be used without lifting it. However, since it is portable, it can be lost. In contrast to the original Stealth's wall-mounted remote, and the overall feel of the remote, this suggests that it might not survive a walk onto the floor without a carpet. Oddly enough, it also uses a 23A battery for which a replacement isn't easy to find. I have since installed three Hunter Antera fans in my home. One of them is quiet and accurate, one is quiet but needs balancing (again, not very well), and the third has axial runout (blades oscillate up and down when turning) but no radial runout (wobble side to side). At the same time, it hums and makes a slight grinding noise at all speeds. Hunter's indifference to build quality is obvious, but as long as people want their fans to be cheaper than they should be, we've all got to grapple with that. . I paid about $650 for this fan. 15 feet from where this fan hangs (on the other side of the wall) is a new Hunter Antera fan that moves the same amount of air, is just as quiet as the new Stealth, but unlike the Stealth could I put some nice bright white LED lights in the Antera, so overall the Antera is better than the Stealth. For less than 1/4 the price! As I said at the beginning, I have no problem paying more for a quality product. This stealth just isn't the right product.