DC BDR 2010 Review by The Good Ride

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Instead of an immediate kink in the center, this board is flat for a bit and then slowly bends up.  It makes the board much more stable 1 footing it, riding on the flats and getting up a little speed.

Ethics Statement: We don’t get paid by the manufacturer to write these reviews.  We do make money from the “Where To Buy” links, but this is our best attempt at an honest and objective review from an average riders’ perspective.

Board Tried- 156

Day’s on the thing- 2
Bindings Used- Burton Cartels

We were hoping to try the 159 which would be more suitable for our height and weight but all we could demo was the 156.  We were surprised at how well this board performed.  It really rides big for its size. This is an interesting take on rocker.  A flat center and then the nose and tail starts to kick up after the bindings.  It’s not very exaggerated but enough to give you that loose catch-free feel but still be stable in the flats.  After riding so many continuous rocker snowboards this was an interesting changeup.

On Snow Feel: The feel between the feet is pretty stable thanks to the flat between the feet but it doesn’t feel that lively.  It’ is a consequence-free ride but you pay the price of not much pop for it in return.

Powder: We had a few days on this in some leftover but untracked sierra cement that was about 14? deep in most places.  Even though it isn’t deep it’s very thick and a great test for this small 156.  It performed admirably and would be a great board to take the park style to the pow.  You could feel a lot more confident in deep and critical situations with this board.  Some people really don’t like rocker for anything including pow but it seems that the #’s of haters are decreasing daily.

Turn Initiation–  Pretty easy to turn but not the easiest for the size.  We think this might have to do with the flat between the feet and the kick at the nose and tail.  We found that rocker boards with a steady curve like Banana Traction makes for a very linear turn and turns almost to easy.  We were kind of expecting that type of turning and were pleasntly suprised that you had a little more stability and it took a little more effort to turn a rocker style board.

Speed:  Not to bad.  Anywhere you go in the park you will have enough speed.  It has a decent base and a pretty stiff flex in the middle of the board.  This helps it perform much better than we thought and it is pretty stable.    Its never that exciting to hit mach speeds with any rockered board but this will do an ok job if you straight line a small hill.  This performs much better than most true rockered boards if you want to flatbase down a steep run or just keep your speed through the flats.  It doesn’t get that wandering feeling that alot of true rockered boards get when you flat base.  Most of those boards always have to be on rail and that isn’t the best for speed.

Lightweight- Pretty light.  DC gets their boards from a production facility in Austria and they are well made with light cores.  Even though it’s light it doesn’t look or feel fragile.  We did not see how far we can go before damaging it but it looks like it will take a lot of work in the park.

Edgehold– Even though this has rocker it has a nice amount of edge hold between the feet without much change to the sidecut.  It performs just as well or better than the cambered DC MLF which is pretty surprising.  It’s not going to blow your mind as a Banana Traction board will but it does a pretty good job in most conditions you will encounter.  If you encounter hardpack and ice a lot then you will be better off with a board with more edge hold.  If you ride mostly in good conditions or have another board for the hard days then this will work.  The one difference between Banana Tech and DC BDR Tech is the board is stable when flat basing.

Jibbing–  Once you get used to this board you will have a lot of fun in the jib park.  It’s very forgiving and this might be one of it’s better qualities.  You can get away with a lot more than you could with a cambered board.

Switch: It’s a twin so it’s just the same each way if you center your stance.

Rails and Boxes–  Not our cup o tea but it’s certainly this boards.  Even though it has a rather stiff midsection

Pipe: It’s not going to perform well in an icy pipe but when it’s warm it will be pretty fun.  If the pipe is your thing you will need some more edge hold but if you like spring sessions you’ll be fine.

Jumps: This board doesn’t have the bend in the tail that is necessary to land the big stuff without washing out.  It also doesn’t spring off of jumps like most cambered boards will.  That being said it doesn’t do that bad of a job landing small jumps for a rockered board.

All in all, this is a great park board.  It doesn’t feel complete but if you can get past some but not all of the drawbacks that are common with reverse camber boards then this will be a fun choice at a good price.