Basher said..
Hmmm.... Some funny comments here.

Just to correct the facts: The Pyro does have a wave board rocker and it's definitely not a slalom or FSW board.
It simply has less tail kick than, say, the Severne Nano.
But it still has some tail kick, and is definitely a waveboard shape.

Some would call this a typical 'Euro wave' shape - and the nearest comparison in other brands is the Fanatic Grip - which has low rocker and very little tail kick.
The key to buying any wave board is not the brand, but to get something which works for your weight and for your local wave and wind conditions.

It depends what you define as a "wavey" shape. The flatter and more speed-oriented a wave board is the less wavey it becomes, by definition.

That pyro is probably just about wavey enough to still be called a waveboard but it looks on the borderline. It also looks absolutely horrible to turn - all of the turns I've seen on it from Dieter Van Der Eyken and Koster look horribly flat and have very little rail involved. Doesn't really matter if you're Koster using twin fins anyway and just sliding about in between stalled doubles and flakashakataka thingies off the lip but for folks who want to set a rail even in bad waves it doesn't look promising. But I guess Severne don't care since they already have the Mako for proper waves and the Nano for Euro waves.

RuaraidhK257 said..
I was really interested to see what severne came out with for Koster's personal board. The short tailed, pushed back wide point Albert pijoan starboard protos he was using in the aloha classic looked really promising. And the Nuevo by James Hooper was an incredible board. Was really interested to see something with elements of those boards combined with a super fast onshore shape. Maybe next time

Maybe ... but looks like a banana compared to the JP Magic Wave if you saw that SURF mag video...it's all relative.

Basher said..

RuaraidhK257 said..

Basher said..
Hmmm.... Some funny comments here.

Just to correct the facts: The Pyro does have a wave board rocker and it's definitely not a slalom or FSW board.
It simply has less tail kick than, say, the Severne Nano.
But it still has some tail kick, and is definitely a waveboard shape.

Some would call this a typical 'Euro wave' shape - and the nearest comparison in other brands is the Fanatic Grip - which has low rocker and very little tail kick.
The key to buying any wave board is not the brand, but to get something which works for your weight and for your local wave and wind conditions.

It depends what you define as a "wavey" shape. The flatter and more speed-oriented a wave board is the less wavey it becomes, by definition.

That pyro is probably just about wavey enough to still be called a waveboard but it looks on the borderline. It also looks absolutely horrible to turn - all of the turns I've seen on it from Dieter Van Der Eyken and Koster look horribly flat and have very little rail involved. Doesn't really matter if you're Koster using twin fins anyway and just sliding about in between stalled doubles and flakashakataka thingies off the lip but for folks who want to set a rail even in bad waves it doesn't look promising. But I guess Severne don't care since they already have the Mako for proper waves and the Nano for Euro waves.

Haha. Mate, you are talking through your teenage arse here.
Do any of your JPs have tail kick at all?

And have you seen a Pyro yet? In what size?

If you actually look at the Pyro, it has lots of curves and plenty of rocker. it also has some tail kick.
This rocker increases in the smaller sizes - as you would expect.

I'm basing my observations of the Pyro on the quality of turn two World Cup sailors can do on it... that's a reasonably good measure of the quality of a waveboard's turning capability.

no, the new Magic wave had hardly any tail kick and it's for that's reason I'm not a big fan of it any more. The Wave Slate that came before it had a very short tail and a fair bit of tail kick; as it happens it produces a very similar feeling turn to the Nano2.

As for the Ultimate Waves - not a huge amount of tail kick but incredibly narrow tails - I have a 69l custom ultimate wave that turns on the head of a needle.

I may be wrong about how freewavey or otherwise the Pyro is but I've watched all of the available video footage of it being sailed and I don't like the turn it does at all. That was my main observation.

Sounds like the Pyro 105 L ticks all the boxes for our local conditions. I've ordered one. But I still have lingering doubts about the (gasp!!!) graphics. Hopefully it's an awesome board because those graphics are really not my cup of tea.

Now i am getting a bit confuced to be honest... does the Pyro turns oke or does it turn really good?
And then i am talking about the bottom turn and the topturn offcourse.
And have anyone sailed the 74 allready and does the smaller model has more rocker then the bigger ones?

Hanstholm said..
Hey guys, any new experiences with this board? You should now have had a number of sessions at various conditions. I'm very interested on a quick review of your 93l for marginal light wind conditions Basher. How does it feel compared to your 83l?

Mine hasn't arrived yet. It's due off the ship in May.
The 83 is great!

philn said..
I received my Pyro 105 about a month ago but no wind up until this week. It came with a 21 cm center and 11 cm thrusters.

Sailed on Thursday with a 5.8 in 1-2 ft occasionally 3 ft poor quality waves. Board felt both stiff and slidey in the turns. I felt I had to stay central over the board or it would slide out for under me. WTH! Have I just wasted US$2,700?

Friday morning sailed with a 4.2 in 3-4 ft waves. Same experience as the previous evening. WTF this board sucks! Contacted a friend who also has the Pyro. He said to try as a quad for more grip. Only suitable rear fins were too big for quad so I went 16 cm K4 twin fins for the afternoon session. Wow, what a difference. Totally transformed the board. It had bite and grip in the bottom turns. Top turns were easier, could now throw buckets of spray. Plus I now had enough control to do aerials over close out sections. Transformed the board from a zero to a hero.

So my question is: are the fins that come with the board really that crap? Or is the center fin box a total waste that they should have left out?

Yeah Philn, I read your post and can say from my experience that there is an ever growing discrepancy between what brands claim and what you get for your hard earned bucks in reality. Maybe you have lost 2700 maybe not, but once that very thought contaminates your mind-you are done and no K4 fins will save the situation. Windsurfing boards have turned into luxury items and causing hesitation in the customer that has payed tons of money is absurd imho. I recently purchased the most expensive 100 rdm mast from a brand that claimed that it is made in Italy masterpiece. While waiting a month to arrive I thought and felt proud that I will be an owner of a really quality product. Guess what- when it came- on the mast bag it said made in Italy. When I pulled the mast out the bottom said... made in China... Maybe the mast is OK and reliable (I haven't tried it yet) but my feeling is tarnished. Did I deserve to go through this after paying 780 US$...maybe paying for some previous sins..I don't know

sprayblaze said..
Yeah Philn, I read your post and can say from my experience that there is an ever growing discrepancy between what brands claim and what you get for your hard earned bucks in reality. Maybe you have lost 2700 maybe not, but once that very thought contaminates your mind-you are done and no K4 fins will save the situation. Windsurfing boards have turned into luxury items and causing hesitation in the customer that has payed tons of money is absurd imho. I recently purchased the most expensive 100 rdm mast from a brand that claimed that it is made in Italy masterpiece. While waiting a month to arrive I thought and felt proud that I will be an owner of a really quality product. Guess what- when it came- on the mast bag it said made in Italy. When I pulled the mast out the bottom said... made in China... Maybe the mast is OK and reliable (I haven't tried it yet) but my feeling is tarnished. Did I deserve to go through this after paying 780 US$...maybe paying for some previous sins..I don't know

What a load of rubbish. As a thruster it was not so good, as a twin it worked well. That is true of most waveboard with 5 boxes. To say "you are done and no K4 fins will save the situation" is stupid. He clearly says that changing to a quad with K4 rears DID save it.

I recently built a quad that I loved in al respects but it seriously lacked drive in the bottom turn. Tried as a thruster, and it is magic - one of my fave boards ever

Philn is sailing very different conditions to the (predominantly) West Oz places this board was tested so I bet I'd like it as a quad.
Make it onshore, bit lighter, bit more need to tighten up that bottom turn and I may well go twin.

So 5 boxes is good -its tuneable. Do we whine about extra weight from adjustable stuff in race cars, MTB's, etc etc...? And the weight isn't that much, the newer Severne boxes are very light compared to the awful moulded plastic things Cobra turned out 5-10 yrs ago (that also broke...)

Agree with you on the mast though...... that's pretty ordinary as we know the Triana factory has turned out superb stuff for a long time so to get Chinese instead is sh!t.

Mark _australia said.. As a thruster it was not so good, as a twin it worked well. That is true of most waveboard with 5 boxes.

By the above, I meant that one configuration will work better ..... not that all 5 box waveboards work better as a twin!!!

Since we're talking about twins, what is the collective preference on fin shape for a twin? I'm curious to try a 5 fin board which I like as a quad in twin mode sometime.
I'm guessing a more upright and larger area set then expect to sail off the front foot?

Stubbys? Those seem very small for twins, I'd expect to use a fin maybe 1cm smaller plus 10cm fronts on my 104L Quad.

Mark _australia said..

sprayblaze said..
Yeah Philn, I read your post and can say from my experience that there is an ever growing discrepancy between what brands claim and what you get for your hard earned bucks in reality. Maybe you have lost 2700 maybe not, but once that very thought contaminates your mind-you are done and no K4 fins will save the situation. Windsurfing boards have turned into luxury items and causing hesitation in the customer that has payed tons of money is absurd imho. I recently purchased the most expensive 100 rdm mast from a brand that claimed that it is made in Italy masterpiece. While waiting a month to arrive I thought and felt proud that I will be an owner of a really quality product. Guess what- when it came- on the mast bag it said made in Italy. When I pulled the mast out the bottom said... made in China... Maybe the mast is OK and reliable (I haven't tried it yet) but my feeling is tarnished. Did I deserve to go through this after paying 780 US$...maybe paying for some previous sins..I don't know

What a load of rubbish. As a thruster it was not so good, as a twin it worked well. That is true of most waveboard with 5 boxes. To say "you are done and no K4 fins will save the situation" is stupid. He clearly says that changing to a quad with K4 rears DID save it.

I recently built a quad that I loved in al respects but it seriously lacked drive in the bottom turn. Tried as a thruster, and it is magic - one of my fave boards ever

Philn is sailing very different conditions to the (predominantly) West Oz places this board was tested so I bet I'd like it as a quad.
Make it onshore, bit lighter, bit more need to tighten up that bottom turn and I may well go twin.

So 5 boxes is good -its tuneable. Do we whine about extra weight from adjustable stuff in race cars, MTB's, etc etc...? And the weight isn't that much, the newer Severne boxes are very light compared to the awful moulded plastic things Cobra turned out 5-10 yrs ago (that also broke...)

Agree with you on the mast though...... that's pretty ordinary as we know the Triana factory has turned out superb stuff for a long time so to get Chinese instead is sh!t.

Exactly... one of my JPs felt like an absolute piece of crap as a thruster, despite being designed and tested primarily with that setup in mind. Try all sorts of versions, none worked.

Tried it as a quad with rake-heavy fins and it turned into one of the most fun boards I've ever used. If they'd kept it with just three boxes the way it was "supposed" to work it would've been a crap board. The addition of quad boxes was very helpful.

This obsession with lowering weight in boards is mad if you ask me. If Philip Koster can jump as high as he does with lumps of Kevlar between his footstraps, joe bloggs' chop hops can survive an extra 400 grams. Add as many finboxes as possible.

My 83 Pyro came as a quad, and that worked well from the get go, so I have yet to try other fin combinations.
But I used to be a big fan of twin fins, so I look forwards to trying those - not least because that is how Koster usually sails on his Pyros in onshore conditions.
You can find a lot of different twin fin shapes, swept back or more vertical, but check the fin width as well at the fin length. I can get away with wide 15cms in a twin, but with onshore MUFC twins I go for longer, at 17cms.
This depends on the sail size used too of course.

I'm reading the recent posts here with interest however, because it's weird to not like a board at all in one fin set up and then to love it in another.
It's also easy with a new board to have a bad first session, simply because you are on unfamiliar gear and make the wrong tuning or driving decisions. Your muscle memories are often geared up to your previous board and it can take a while to adapt to the new stance needed.

It also takes a while to decide which fin set up you prefer, and it will be key to get the footstrap placements right for your weight and sailing stance. Note the earlier posts about the Pyro's unusually wide footstrap hole placements, compared to other Severne waveboards.
Note too that with a fast rocker board you need good stance to drive the board through the turns, because this board does not supply you with a de-tuned rocker to make half-hearted turns easy.


We can also talk about the advantages or otherwise of different fin set ups. Many like a tri fin for all round use but the longer back fin also allows the board to sail fast off its tail, like with a single fin, and so that's a great combo for bigger sails and for jumping conditions. It should also help early planing - although that's never an issue with the Pyro.

A quad set up is more drivey on the wave face - if you have some reasonable waves in the first place.

The twin fin set up loosens any board, allowing tighter turns - but heavier guys often hate twins because they are slidey underfoot and not the best if you are heavy on your backfoot or slow to react.

But these are all things to try, to suit your board size, body weight and local sailing conditions. What works for one sailor is often not the best set up for another.

Grantmac said..
Stubbys? Those seem very small for twins, I'd expect to use a fin maybe 1cm smaller plus 10cm fronts on my 104L Quad.

The Stubby's were actually my favorite but actually haven't tried the Leon's or Incinerator. For Twins have compared Scorcher, Stubby, & Rockets on my fast rockered twin. The Scorcher is very soft & flexy feeling, you can push it around allot without letting go. The Stubby is pretty powerful for it's size, felt more lifty in a straight line & more pivot in the turns. The Rockets were incredible upwind but stiffened up the board a surprising amount. I like the Stubby best in general but would take the Scorcher if I needed to settle the board down in keep grip in the turns...

Ran the 87 in Nostalgia mode this weekend. 4.5, 5.0 & 5.3 in crappy cross-on. These fins have to be nearly 30yrs old (my old favs) & were only recently found in my spare-spares box hidden in another box. Worked an absolute treat, 150mm with a base that fills the slot box + moderate tip flex.

Am finding this board is probably the fastest wave board I've owned. It is very capable of plodding around like a normal quad offering a ton of security for general use if required. The big difference compared to my usual (3 other quad) wave boards is this thing seems to have an accelerator and putting the hammer down requires 'speed sailor at the limit' commitment. Think twice or look sideways when travelling as quick as this board is capable & big splashes can result. Having said that, I am having a cracking good time learning what to do with all this new found speed in the waves and taming my new toy with fins+strap+ base positions.