Burton Kilroy Custom Snowboard Review

The Burton Kilroy Custom is a pretty fun ride and it takes the joy of turning you get with the twinish custom and carries that over into a more directional shape. This board was a pleasure to ride and quite a taint tickling directional turner.

Size: 158
Days: 3+
Conditions:  Pretty wet but better than you would think. good groomers and about 1-1.5′ of PNW powder.
Riders: James, Jimbo, Tim, Peter
Boots: Burton Almighty, Adidas Tactical ADV
Bindings: Burton Malavita,
Set Up:  Around 22.5″ to 23″ wide 15 front and -9 back

Recommended Boot and Binding: Worked pretty good with the Burton Malavita but the Burton Cartel or even Burton Genesis would have been great. The Ruler or Burton Imperial would work really well too.

Approximate Weight: Felt normal.

Flex: Felt more Medium/Stiff to us than Medium

Sizing: The 158 was perfect for Peter (8.5 boot) and I (9 boot) but not ideal for Tim (11.5) and Jimbo (11).

On Snow Feel: Basically a more directional  Custom that makes directional turning even more fun.  It’s got the flex, camber and turning ability of the custom with the older more directional Custom from the 2000’s revamped with a chopped tail and big old blunted nose.  It’s like a full camber non-tapered Flight Attendant and that is great.  It’s still pretty locked in and a catchy ride but what a fun ride.  It’s all about directional turning and directional Air but it’s still not completely above riding fakie.  It lives on the Freeride side of All mountain and it’s fun to have a double ender feel with such a directional ride.

Edge Hold: We didn’t get enough hard snow to really know for sure but it seems like it could be a touch better than the Custom when it comes to gripping the harder snow.

Turn Initiation: Pretty quick and it always seemed to get where I needed at the time I wanted it there.

Turning Experience: Man this is the standout part of this board.  A long time ago Burton really made camber boards turn well and this is another stand out example.  It’s just a super fun board to turn any way you want to.  It just seems to like any radius you want to turn very well and set you up for the next one.

Carving: So much fun to carve and it’s a lot of fun to really lay it out with the Burton Kilroy Custom.  We had more fun with directional carving and turning this than we did with the standard Custom. Because the tip/tail are the same widths you can turn more from between your feet and drive off the front foot if you would like which isn’t as easy to do with many tapered boards. Even with Burtons Freeride Geometry side cuts, which are great for making tapered rides feel less washy on the tail, don’t compare to the double ender Burton Custom Kilroy.  You can lean back to get pretty surfy or keep the turn balanced between the feet or really drive off your front foot almost equally well with this board.

Skidded Turns: The medium flex makes the board feel less aggressive than you would think but that full camber still catches so don’t let the lower price point fool you.  This is a board that will make you pay if you get off your game.  That’s why we call this aggressive all mountain.  Not because it’s the dampest board in the land but more because it requires a technically sound rider to handle this well.

Speed: There is really good speed with the Burton Custom Kilroy and we felt it was almost there with the Custom.  Its base isn’t quite as nice though and in the conditions that might be why.  Often times the more fancy bases, if not properly waxed, can be slower than the base’s like the Custom Kilroy has.  So I think that’s why the Custom Kilroy stood out as a fast base in the conditions we had when all we tried that day were out of the factory without a post unwrapping wax job.

Uneven Terrain: The medium flex and Burton’s overall dampening tech made this board pretty easy to weave in and out of the messy bumpy snow as long as you know how to properly turn. It’s not ideal for those that skid turns through the snow.

Powder:  Usually, with Camber boards like the Burton Custom Kilroy, it’s far from ideal in the deeper stuff but with a 23″ stance width you can set it back 8.5″ on board which will compensate rather well for all that camber going on. This along with the big ass nose and chopped tail made it float really really well for camber.  It felt close to or as good as many directional camber rides I’ve tried. It’s not tapered in the tail like the Flight Attendant but it’s got considerably less volume than the nose so it seems like it could provide really good directional float for a camber board.  That long nose really helped counteract the cambers natural tendancy to sink it. In the up to 1.5 feet of powder and set close to the reference stance it jammed through it and had some pretty back leg friendly float. It was a lot of fun to ride and can’t wait to try it set all the way back in the deep deep.

Buttering: Not super easy to butter. Camber all the way to the tip and tail used to be easier but all this hybrid stuff has spoiled us over the years and it’s just not as easy as it used to be. It requires a strong rider to really bend this.

Switch: It’s not as symmetrical as the Custom taking it switch/fakie but it’s way more doable than you would think for how directional it is.

Jibbing: Nah…..

Pipe: We didn’t hit the pipe but I think I would have fun slashing and driving wall to wall with this.

Jumps: Such great pop off the tail and nose.  It really launches if you put some strength behind your ollies and it would be fine for mostly directional air off most kickers out there.

So all in all the Burton Kilroy Custom was the surprise of our 18 Burton Demo. We were so excited about the Free Thinker and Deep Thinker combo that we almost didn’t ride the Kilroy Custom and we are so glad we did.  It’s a board we’d all like to own and for the price, it’s hard to do much better.