Editorial Policy

Independence

• No sponsored placements. No paid rankings. No advertorial.
• No free products, samples or loan units from any manufacturer.
• Affiliate commission does not influence ranking or wording. Every roundup names at least one product we would not buy, and it earns the same rate as the ones we recommend. Full disclosure.
• No manufacturer reviews a page before publication.

Sourcing standards

Sources are used in this order of preference:

1. The manufacturer’s own manual, spec sheet or product page. Used for every physical measurement. Cited by model, with the page or URL and the date read.
2. The live retailer listing. Used for price and availability, and for specifications where the manufacturer publishes none. Always labeled as the retailer listing, because the two are not equally authoritative and they sometimes disagree.
3. A named public-health authority — the CDC, NIH / National Institute on Aging, or the Arthritis Foundation — for every physiological or activity-guideline claim. Named inline in the sentence with a live link, never as a bare footnote.

Where two sources disagree, we publish both and say which we are going with. Where a figure is derived by arithmetic from a published one, it is labeled “Derived” and the working is shown.

Not acceptable as a source, ever

• Another affiliate site’s specification table.
• A product photograph or marketing render.
• A forum post, a customer review, or “commonly known”.
• An AI model’s recall. Every figure here was read off a page on a dated visit.

No fabrication

We do not invent specifications, prices, ratings, review counts, testimonials or credentials. Specifically:

• No fabricated specs.A measurement nobody publishes is printed as “Not published by the manufacturer” — never estimated, never inferred from a photo, never left as a blank that reads as zero.
• No fabricated prices. Prices come from live retailer data, are date- stamped, and expire automatically after 48 hours.
• No testimonials or customer reviews. There are none anywhere on this site. We have no customers, so there is nothing honest to quote.
• No ratings we did not produce.No score out of ten, and no star ratings in this site’s structured data. We will not restate Amazon’s ratings as though they were ours.

On AI

Drafting tools are used in producing this site, as they are almost everywhere now. What matters is the rule that constrains them: no figure, specification, price, citation or URL on this site originates from a language model’s recall. Every measurement traces to a manufacturer page or dated retailer listing. Every authority link was retrieved from that authority’s own domain. A plausible-sounding number with no source does not ship, and a plausible-sounding URL is worse than no citation at all.

Health claims

Stephen V. is an enthusiast, not a clinician. Nobody working on this site holds a medical, therapy or fitness qualification, and nothing here has been medically reviewed — a phrase we will not use unless a named clinician has genuinely reviewed the page.

On any health-adjacent page:

• We answer the equipment question and never prescribe treatment.
• Every physiological claim names an authority and links to it.
• A visible note tells you to talk to your doctor or physical therapist before starting something new.
• We do not imply a medical qualification, in wording or in layout.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it within seven days and update the “last updated” date on the page. Where the correction changes a recommendation, we say so on the page rather than editing quietly.

Manufacturers revise models without renaming them, so specifications do drift out of date. A correction is not an embarrassment; a stale figure left standing would be. Email info@treadandtone.com or use the contact form.

Update cadence

• Prices: refreshed daily, and they expire on their own after 48 hours.
• Availability: swept monthly. A dead buy button is worse than no button.
• Specification panels: re-checked against the current manufacturer documentation quarterly.
• Full page review:every six months, with the “last updated” date reflecting genuine review — never a cosmetic touch to look fresh.
• Authority citations: re-read twice a year, because CDC and NIA guidance does change and links do rot.

Authorship

Every page carries a named byline and a last-updated date. There is one writer, and there is no editorial team beyond him — so you will never see “our team of experts” here, because it would not be true. Read who writes this and how the method works.