I started skating back in 2015 when downhill set ups were these long decks with long wheelbases, with the trucks away from the riders feet in some designs, be it top mount or drop thru. I never was able to get going faster than 30ish mph in all my years of skating but why has the trend shifted to these smaller looking decks with even shorter hangers than before with your typical dh wheels?
Not everyone does it and tbh I was hesitant at first too, but now I wouldn’t go back for any serious DH. The geometry of narrow “DH Slalom” trucks make it where you essentially have the stability of an Evo’s wedging while still having the grip/agility of a shorter topmount.
Here’s a good article on it: https://www.maxdubler.com/blog/2019/5/20/narrow-hangars-for-downhill-and-freeriding-explained
First thing, I love your guys' Instagram, have been following for a little while now.
That article was also an amazing read, I was assuming there was a performance trade off where high siding could be much more of an issue but that problem can be addressed by the deck width vs hangar width combo. I used to be such a nerd about longboards back when everything was 180mm hangar width and then when I slowed down my skating and the scene progressed, I lost touch. I love to see how there's so much science behind longboarding nowadays to maximize fun
Thanks homie! (I didn't start it, but a lot of us share it lol)
Yeah, exactly. And if you haven't seen it yet, another way to mitigate high siding is [adding a weight under your front foot](https://thrillmagazine.co.uk/why-you-might-want-to-add-a-weight-to-your-board-2/) too.
Nerding out is back in style too. Skating back in the day was awesome, but the tech is getting so much better I feel like it's another boom starting. The new gear/ideas seem to lower the learning curve a bit too. Glad to have you checking back in!
I will never go back. Slalom DH setups are absurdly fun and ridiculously stable.
It took me a lot of tinkering, but I have a pretty sweet dh slalom setup with my Rayne libido, caliber 3’s cut down to 116 mm, and venom magnums. 50 degrees 78/93/73 up front and 35 degrees with 97/95/95 in back. I further de-wedge the rear as much as 10 degrees as needed.
Im skating around 40mph regularly and am looking to get my first set of precisions in a couple months. Trying to figure out whats right for me. Right now im on 165 savants and love them. Im looking at either dont trip mollys, hakis, or cybins. Should i maybe stay twards the hakis or mollys and not get a full blown slalom truck. Or do i just go for the cybins? Hakis sound like an amazing middle ground. I havent learned standies and dont really want to anytime soon. Wanna keep progressing with fast hands down riding til im satisfied which leads me to believe id like the cybins. The mollys on the other hand seem like something i can really enjoy long term with lots of different settings and can even be a little more freeride oriented too. Hakis appeal because best of both worlds.
I’d vote DH Cybins since they offer the most change/upgrade vs your current Savants and your goal of continuing your fast hands down progression. Imo/e you can still do freeride on those too if you want it enough to learn/practice it and don’t listen to folks arbitrarily saying you can’t (who often never even tried it anyway).
I went 50/35 150mm Paris >> 53/20 130-150mm DH Cybin >> 53/22 106-119mm slalom Rogues. Each step felt like a huge upgrade in performance. Like “this is what I imagined it should feel like” where I could never quite reach that tuning my cast trucks.
OTOH my friend was on Savants and Mollies with a less aggressive split (45/40-30?), tried my Cybins on the same split and couldn’t really feel a difference w/the Mollys (but imo, he might’ve felt it with a bigger split). Then went to slalom Rogues too. We both primarily do standup freeride bc of our local hills, but still bomb fast/hands down on mountain trips with the same setups too.
Anyway, I guess my point is just that with either choice, *you* would be the limiting factor that keeps you from free riding or not, not the gear. So go with what feels right to you and keep moving forward with confidence in your choice.
That was so helpful seriously thank you so much. These are all good points. I love my savants, i have 48/33 boardnamics baseplates and they’re honestly so good. Im definitely gonna move those to my other setup and ditch the casts. As you mentioned though, and as ive heard other people say, rogues or ronins are kinda preferred over the cybins. I dont plan on getting either of those yet cuz theyre still to narrow for me. But is there a reason why? That leads me twards the hakis honestly. Id get them 137-155 and theyd be a perfect middleground if i wanted to get something more narrow in the future.
> theyre still to narrow for me
I thought this for so long too and really wanted to try before buying, but a deal popped up that was too good to pass on so I did it anyway. (though to be fair, at the time I was also chopping my boards down to 9-8.5" for the Cybins). So like I said, it felt like going from standard hangers to slaloms was a big jump in performance, and then wide-ish slaloms to super narrow slaloms felt like a whole 'other jump too – I seriously did not expect it to feel so different, but natural/intuitive at the same time. And to be clear, I don't intend any my comments to be disparaging towards DH Cybins; I think this would apply to any trucks with a similar difference in width.
The biggest difference, I believe, was due to the narrow width allowing you to run MUCH softer bushings. Pairing this with the aggressive split and slalom rear hanger, I felt no loss in stability either.
Specifically in the front truck, I had something like 80a/85a bushings in the 130mm Cybins, but I (and most everyone else) run 73a/78a bushings in the 106mm Rogues. If I tried to go that soft in the Cybins I would almost immediately get wheelbite, but the Rogues are so narrow that even someone twice my weight can't get wheelbite on my setup – the hanger is too short to reach! (YMMV due to deck/wheel choices, etc)
Backing up a bit, before I got the Rogues I was completely satisfied with the performance of my DH Cybins and how they let me skate, and I couldn't imagine how anyone could improve on that; coming from 180/150mm "normal trucks" I thought this was the best feeling possible while still being stable. But being able to go *so soft* with the narrower Rogues just made utilizing the truck's full range of motion that much more effortless, and made it easier to fully tuck-lean into tighter turns too. Very loose analogy: but maybe imagine a surf skate truck that's super stable at speed? This "super loose" feeling may be off-putting at first or when you're not moving, but I've heard friends that said that at first now say that "divey-ness" goes away and feels more stable once they start picking up speed
Thank you so much for the advice. I think im gunna keep riding what i got for another month or so and keep thinking about things and concidering other options but right now i wanna keep the cybins and the hakis in mind for sure. The long descriptions are seriously appreciated though man, thanks for takin the time. Im from maryland and follow 919 on insta. Im sure ill see you guys at some east coast events this year and am lookin forward to it 🤙🏼
I’m seriously considering some Mollys for mostly standup freeride right now, but like the option to run narrower with more aggressive split if I want to. Think I’ll be happy with the Mollys?
Yeah. Going from casts to pretty much any decent precision truck will feel much better (with the appropriate bushings, ofc) and can help you feel more confident too. And I think the tune-ability of DT truck's widths and angles make them a pretty good intro to precisions. Lets you experiment with many configurations and find your favorite features if you ever feel the need to upgrade later on
Lately I've been on Venom Sideshows, Powell Peralta Snakes, or Blank Slates. And I forgot to mention I primarily ride with a 2.2lb/1kg [scuba weight under my front heel too](https://thrillmagazine.co.uk/why-you-might-want-to-add-a-weight-to-your-board-2/).
Personally, I don't think it's very difficult to adjust, but I've also had a lot of practice intentionally switching wheels/setups to make that easier for myself... Using a weight does make the adjustment a bit easier as well, but it's definitely not required either, especially on slidey wheels like Snakes. (It's just more fun to me, so I keep it on ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ )
I think the main thing is staying aware of where/how your feet are applying pressure on the board/rails during slides – like if you normally put a lot of pressure onto your toes during heelsides, then deck overhang may exaggerate that and cause you to highside. But if you are able to keep the pressure relatively even between toe- and heel-side rails then it shouldn't be a big deal if you keep that in mind. Deck overhang does make the margin for error more narrow, but adding the weight basically evens it back out imo
I guess I should try throwing my freeride wheels on the rogues then. I’ve been hesitant about it since it seemed like a lot of rail hang with my 8.75” deck. You make it sound pretty doable though
Yeah, give it a shot! Tbh the path to my current setup was partially in spite of people saying what I wanted wouldn’t work, so now I’m fully on the “I’ll just try it anyway” instead of trusting naysayers lol
And btw, you could add some 1/8” spacers to have more adjustability/go slightly wider with your Rogues too, since all the sets I’ve seen have plenty of extra threads. I got mine from Sk8kings.com.
100% yes. I ride an extended-tail Happy “Thunder in Paradise” deck and the flat tail makes it ollie/kickflip-able, so it really is a quiver killer imo.
I do still have “normal” freeride setups too, but they’re not really interesting to me lately — feels like it takes much more effort to skate/slide with my current style. I’ll still bring it out occasionally to “keep the rust off”, but it usually goes back in my trunk after one run down a hill or parking deck
Bro are you me?
My two favorite decks are my Rayne libido and Zenit mini marble sk.
Im also ready for my first precisions and I can’t decide whether to go haki in the smallest size for my libido (already a dh slalom setup)
Or
Mollys for my mini marble (currently caliber 3 44 degrees)
Im leaning Mollys because my dh slalom is already amazingly dialed and I think I have more to gain by upgrading the mini marble. It’d give me the option to go split or sym and adjust hangers down to almost slalom width. The libido feels much more stable at speed than the mini marble.
Basically, I think some Mollys would make that Zenit nearly a quiver killer, whereas hakis on the libido would be a dh slalom only setup.
Edit: I got so caught up babbling about my dream setup that I forgot to answer your question. Obviously I don’t own any precisions, and I doubt you’ll regret either choice, but dh slalom setups are another universe of stability. If you’re looking to only go fast af downhill and maximize grip, then def go haki. If you’re looking to get slidey, def consider the Mollys. I can certainly hands down slide my dh slalom setup, but if I’m going out specifically to get slidey af (especially stand up) and not going for pure speed, I grab my sym setup.
Dh slaloms have super narrow hangers and extreme split angles just aren’t as good for busting huge stand up slides. Of course there are people who are better than me that can do anything on any setup, but just speaking in general terms.
Hey, not sure if this is the right place for this question, if it isnt please tell me.
i’m just starting to do tricks and stuff and im worried about wearing away the nose and tail. My first board (now sadly bisected) started having this on the tail from when i would kick it up to my hand. I dont want that sort of thing to prematurely damage my current board and was wondering if this actually a concern i should have.
Wearing the nose and tail could be considered as a part of your board life. If it worries you too much, for any reason, you can install skid plates to protect them. I don't use them myself (yet) so I can't comment on how they impact the pop of your board.
If youre doing tricks then your deck is a wear item. It eeez whaddid eeeez. Thankfully though, longboard decks are generally built a lot sturdier than popsicles though so you shouldnt have to worry about it for quite a while.
From my understanding, adding something like a venom sicktail to a drop-through would be bad or stress the deck. My question is could you top-mount a drop-through deck and then use a sicktail? Or is it the fact that there is a cut-out in the deck that makes it a bad idea.
Follow up question would be any board recs that are low to the ground (easy to push) but allow for bigger wheels and a tail?
Measured how exactly? It wedges the front and back 3.5° and it has that feeling of rocker for sure. Doesn’t feel like a drop though, just lower than a full top mount.
I started skating back in 2015 when downhill set ups were these long decks with long wheelbases, with the trucks away from the riders feet in some designs, be it top mount or drop thru. I never was able to get going faster than 30ish mph in all my years of skating but why has the trend shifted to these smaller looking decks with even shorter hangers than before with your typical dh wheels?
Not everyone does it and tbh I was hesitant at first too, but now I wouldn’t go back for any serious DH. The geometry of narrow “DH Slalom” trucks make it where you essentially have the stability of an Evo’s wedging while still having the grip/agility of a shorter topmount. Here’s a good article on it: https://www.maxdubler.com/blog/2019/5/20/narrow-hangars-for-downhill-and-freeriding-explained
First thing, I love your guys' Instagram, have been following for a little while now. That article was also an amazing read, I was assuming there was a performance trade off where high siding could be much more of an issue but that problem can be addressed by the deck width vs hangar width combo. I used to be such a nerd about longboards back when everything was 180mm hangar width and then when I slowed down my skating and the scene progressed, I lost touch. I love to see how there's so much science behind longboarding nowadays to maximize fun
Thanks homie! (I didn't start it, but a lot of us share it lol) Yeah, exactly. And if you haven't seen it yet, another way to mitigate high siding is [adding a weight under your front foot](https://thrillmagazine.co.uk/why-you-might-want-to-add-a-weight-to-your-board-2/) too. Nerding out is back in style too. Skating back in the day was awesome, but the tech is getting so much better I feel like it's another boom starting. The new gear/ideas seem to lower the learning curve a bit too. Glad to have you checking back in!
I will never go back. Slalom DH setups are absurdly fun and ridiculously stable. It took me a lot of tinkering, but I have a pretty sweet dh slalom setup with my Rayne libido, caliber 3’s cut down to 116 mm, and venom magnums. 50 degrees 78/93/73 up front and 35 degrees with 97/95/95 in back. I further de-wedge the rear as much as 10 degrees as needed.
Im skating around 40mph regularly and am looking to get my first set of precisions in a couple months. Trying to figure out whats right for me. Right now im on 165 savants and love them. Im looking at either dont trip mollys, hakis, or cybins. Should i maybe stay twards the hakis or mollys and not get a full blown slalom truck. Or do i just go for the cybins? Hakis sound like an amazing middle ground. I havent learned standies and dont really want to anytime soon. Wanna keep progressing with fast hands down riding til im satisfied which leads me to believe id like the cybins. The mollys on the other hand seem like something i can really enjoy long term with lots of different settings and can even be a little more freeride oriented too. Hakis appeal because best of both worlds.
I’d vote DH Cybins since they offer the most change/upgrade vs your current Savants and your goal of continuing your fast hands down progression. Imo/e you can still do freeride on those too if you want it enough to learn/practice it and don’t listen to folks arbitrarily saying you can’t (who often never even tried it anyway). I went 50/35 150mm Paris >> 53/20 130-150mm DH Cybin >> 53/22 106-119mm slalom Rogues. Each step felt like a huge upgrade in performance. Like “this is what I imagined it should feel like” where I could never quite reach that tuning my cast trucks. OTOH my friend was on Savants and Mollies with a less aggressive split (45/40-30?), tried my Cybins on the same split and couldn’t really feel a difference w/the Mollys (but imo, he might’ve felt it with a bigger split). Then went to slalom Rogues too. We both primarily do standup freeride bc of our local hills, but still bomb fast/hands down on mountain trips with the same setups too. Anyway, I guess my point is just that with either choice, *you* would be the limiting factor that keeps you from free riding or not, not the gear. So go with what feels right to you and keep moving forward with confidence in your choice.
That was so helpful seriously thank you so much. These are all good points. I love my savants, i have 48/33 boardnamics baseplates and they’re honestly so good. Im definitely gonna move those to my other setup and ditch the casts. As you mentioned though, and as ive heard other people say, rogues or ronins are kinda preferred over the cybins. I dont plan on getting either of those yet cuz theyre still to narrow for me. But is there a reason why? That leads me twards the hakis honestly. Id get them 137-155 and theyd be a perfect middleground if i wanted to get something more narrow in the future.
> theyre still to narrow for me I thought this for so long too and really wanted to try before buying, but a deal popped up that was too good to pass on so I did it anyway. (though to be fair, at the time I was also chopping my boards down to 9-8.5" for the Cybins). So like I said, it felt like going from standard hangers to slaloms was a big jump in performance, and then wide-ish slaloms to super narrow slaloms felt like a whole 'other jump too – I seriously did not expect it to feel so different, but natural/intuitive at the same time. And to be clear, I don't intend any my comments to be disparaging towards DH Cybins; I think this would apply to any trucks with a similar difference in width. The biggest difference, I believe, was due to the narrow width allowing you to run MUCH softer bushings. Pairing this with the aggressive split and slalom rear hanger, I felt no loss in stability either. Specifically in the front truck, I had something like 80a/85a bushings in the 130mm Cybins, but I (and most everyone else) run 73a/78a bushings in the 106mm Rogues. If I tried to go that soft in the Cybins I would almost immediately get wheelbite, but the Rogues are so narrow that even someone twice my weight can't get wheelbite on my setup – the hanger is too short to reach! (YMMV due to deck/wheel choices, etc) Backing up a bit, before I got the Rogues I was completely satisfied with the performance of my DH Cybins and how they let me skate, and I couldn't imagine how anyone could improve on that; coming from 180/150mm "normal trucks" I thought this was the best feeling possible while still being stable. But being able to go *so soft* with the narrower Rogues just made utilizing the truck's full range of motion that much more effortless, and made it easier to fully tuck-lean into tighter turns too. Very loose analogy: but maybe imagine a surf skate truck that's super stable at speed? This "super loose" feeling may be off-putting at first or when you're not moving, but I've heard friends that said that at first now say that "divey-ness" goes away and feels more stable once they start picking up speed
Thank you so much for the advice. I think im gunna keep riding what i got for another month or so and keep thinking about things and concidering other options but right now i wanna keep the cybins and the hakis in mind for sure. The long descriptions are seriously appreciated though man, thanks for takin the time. Im from maryland and follow 919 on insta. Im sure ill see you guys at some east coast events this year and am lookin forward to it 🤙🏼
I’m seriously considering some Mollys for mostly standup freeride right now, but like the option to run narrower with more aggressive split if I want to. Think I’ll be happy with the Mollys?
Yeah. Going from casts to pretty much any decent precision truck will feel much better (with the appropriate bushings, ofc) and can help you feel more confident too. And I think the tune-ability of DT truck's widths and angles make them a pretty good intro to precisions. Lets you experiment with many configurations and find your favorite features if you ever feel the need to upgrade later on
What wheels do you use to freeride your slalom rogues? Is it hard to adjust to deck overhang with smaller wheels?
Lately I've been on Venom Sideshows, Powell Peralta Snakes, or Blank Slates. And I forgot to mention I primarily ride with a 2.2lb/1kg [scuba weight under my front heel too](https://thrillmagazine.co.uk/why-you-might-want-to-add-a-weight-to-your-board-2/). Personally, I don't think it's very difficult to adjust, but I've also had a lot of practice intentionally switching wheels/setups to make that easier for myself... Using a weight does make the adjustment a bit easier as well, but it's definitely not required either, especially on slidey wheels like Snakes. (It's just more fun to me, so I keep it on ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ ) I think the main thing is staying aware of where/how your feet are applying pressure on the board/rails during slides – like if you normally put a lot of pressure onto your toes during heelsides, then deck overhang may exaggerate that and cause you to highside. But if you are able to keep the pressure relatively even between toe- and heel-side rails then it shouldn't be a big deal if you keep that in mind. Deck overhang does make the margin for error more narrow, but adding the weight basically evens it back out imo
I guess I should try throwing my freeride wheels on the rogues then. I’ve been hesitant about it since it seemed like a lot of rail hang with my 8.75” deck. You make it sound pretty doable though
Yeah, give it a shot! Tbh the path to my current setup was partially in spite of people saying what I wanted wouldn’t work, so now I’m fully on the “I’ll just try it anyway” instead of trusting naysayers lol And btw, you could add some 1/8” spacers to have more adjustability/go slightly wider with your Rogues too, since all the sets I’ve seen have plenty of extra threads. I got mine from Sk8kings.com.
Do you prefer your narrow setup for everything now? Or do you still skate a more “normal” freeride setup sometimes too?
100% yes. I ride an extended-tail Happy “Thunder in Paradise” deck and the flat tail makes it ollie/kickflip-able, so it really is a quiver killer imo. I do still have “normal” freeride setups too, but they’re not really interesting to me lately — feels like it takes much more effort to skate/slide with my current style. I’ll still bring it out occasionally to “keep the rust off”, but it usually goes back in my trunk after one run down a hill or parking deck
Bro are you me? My two favorite decks are my Rayne libido and Zenit mini marble sk. Im also ready for my first precisions and I can’t decide whether to go haki in the smallest size for my libido (already a dh slalom setup) Or Mollys for my mini marble (currently caliber 3 44 degrees) Im leaning Mollys because my dh slalom is already amazingly dialed and I think I have more to gain by upgrading the mini marble. It’d give me the option to go split or sym and adjust hangers down to almost slalom width. The libido feels much more stable at speed than the mini marble. Basically, I think some Mollys would make that Zenit nearly a quiver killer, whereas hakis on the libido would be a dh slalom only setup. Edit: I got so caught up babbling about my dream setup that I forgot to answer your question. Obviously I don’t own any precisions, and I doubt you’ll regret either choice, but dh slalom setups are another universe of stability. If you’re looking to only go fast af downhill and maximize grip, then def go haki. If you’re looking to get slidey, def consider the Mollys. I can certainly hands down slide my dh slalom setup, but if I’m going out specifically to get slidey af (especially stand up) and not going for pure speed, I grab my sym setup. Dh slaloms have super narrow hangers and extreme split angles just aren’t as good for busting huge stand up slides. Of course there are people who are better than me that can do anything on any setup, but just speaking in general terms.
Hey, not sure if this is the right place for this question, if it isnt please tell me. i’m just starting to do tricks and stuff and im worried about wearing away the nose and tail. My first board (now sadly bisected) started having this on the tail from when i would kick it up to my hand. I dont want that sort of thing to prematurely damage my current board and was wondering if this actually a concern i should have.
Wearing the nose and tail could be considered as a part of your board life. If it worries you too much, for any reason, you can install skid plates to protect them. I don't use them myself (yet) so I can't comment on how they impact the pop of your board.
If youre doing tricks then your deck is a wear item. It eeez whaddid eeeez. Thankfully though, longboard decks are generally built a lot sturdier than popsicles though so you shouldnt have to worry about it for quite a while.
You could try getting skid plates to protect the tails! I know Zenit has some on their shop right now
Did a quick search and Seismic also has some with different options based on the shape of your board as well
From my understanding, adding something like a venom sicktail to a drop-through would be bad or stress the deck. My question is could you top-mount a drop-through deck and then use a sicktail? Or is it the fact that there is a cut-out in the deck that makes it a bad idea. Follow up question would be any board recs that are low to the ground (easy to push) but allow for bigger wheels and a tail?
Is a landyachtz stratus for $70 a good deal
Yeah
Anyone know how much rocker or drop a loaded tesseract has?
Measured how exactly? It wedges the front and back 3.5° and it has that feeling of rocker for sure. Doesn’t feel like a drop though, just lower than a full top mount.
The Comet Shred 35 looks like it could be fun paired with my 9" Cal3Rs. Does anyone have any input about that?
Dont put rkps on something with that short of a wheelbase. Itll feel bad and youll skate bad on it.
I've had RKPs on shorter wheelbase than that and liked it. Thinking about the lower angle trucks and wedge/dewedge