First draft Greg Pautsch article on his time in Newport during the late seventies and all through the ninties. His time working with Geoff McCoy and the association with Quik. It’s a first draft. Hope you enjoy it.
Good read Solosurfer, all ways dug that high energy period and bright colourful boards
everyone having fun at the beach. It makes what you see these days seem very boring
and monotone, black wetsuits, clear boards how were we ever convinced that this is a
good look.
Do you know if the book that quicksilver produced recently called Echo Beach is available.
There was another book they put out that had many pictures of the era. Can’t remember the name. I gave it to the owner of the shop I sold mine to. Not sure about Echo beach book. I was working in a Surf shop in those years and then moved to O.C. The engery was everywhere. Not just in surfing. The club scen, music scene and etc were completely fresh. The rest of the world was falling for the whole boring conservative mantra but creative stuff was at an all time high. It ended in 84 almost as quick as it started though. I would say Live Aid was the high tide of the whole thing. Seven years of fun though. I clearly remember the Quik Rep having to talk the shop owners into taking the stuff over sun britches even though all of us shop kids were yelling " buy it! "
I like much of the old 70’s music. Don’t get me wrong, but at that time, PIL, Devo, the Vapors, DK, Martha and The muffins and Ultravox sounded so fresh and the look of the boards seemd space age.
One of my friends worked as a production shaper at McCoy in HOC. He was also making some pretty fine Egg Shapes in Encinitas with Moonlight glassing. As far as the new look I hope I never see another Kid with a bad haircut dyed purple wearing a neon yellow wetsuit.
The only reason clear boards became popular was due to all the pros riding clear sanded finish boards ad stickers to make it look like you had sponsors. You were now a cool surfer dude.
Is is no doubt that McCoy opened the eyes of some of california shapers. Putting the volume and wide point closer to under the foot just made sense for those that wanted a short board. McCoy did push the limit but when it was brought back and refined it was a something to see in action.
Good article Solo, that creative period did end suddenly, thats maybe why theres a cyclic rebirthing of trends from the 60's 70's and 80's. 90's fashion was stillborn.
Karl Largerfeld said theres been nothing new for decades.
Great read!
I like reading anything on McCoy and his design philosophies and I think that article has set the scene quite nicely for a more in depth one just on Greg and his theories 
I’m relatively new to surfing but I agree that this era must of ended a little prematurely. I love a lot of the eighties designs and coming from an engineering background the McCoy and Other’s design principles make perfect sense (to me anyway).
Cheers,
Mick.
I have a bunch more information. My interview filled ten pages. It’s just really hard to tell that entire story all at once. I just wanted to give the outline with this one and make the asseration that it’s a bit of history mostly left out of what has been written in corpo magazines and frankly most so called surfing heritage type mosoleums have left it out or misreported it also.
I’m trying to get GP to fill out an interview page with questions and answers. As some here can attest, Pautsch’s modern shorties are something to behold. He might be one of the most underrated shapers out there. He is a quiet gentleman. You won’t here much bragging from him. Just stoked to still be producing boards for those will enjoy them.
The creative element between at that time was running high in many areas. There were others I would like to write about also and hopefully will be soon. Some of the blogs are starting to pick up on it and show boards and write about it also. My friend Kirk put out a book called, " **** You heroes " that was an unreal pictoral history of some notorious bands of the era.
Solosurfer, I enjoyed that. I hadn't heard of Greg Pautsch before reading your article. It shows how the surf world was internationally well connected even before the internet.
The suggestion that McCoy provided a necessary ingredient for the modern HP thruster to work does stand up to some chronological scrutiny using the surfresearch.com.au catalogue ie. the arrival of the "no nose" concept featuring some combination of narrow nose relative to tail width and wide point back from centre.
McCoy 1978 - wide point forward
http://www.surfresearch.com.au/00000084.html
Zap 1980 - wide point back 12"! I was living in the UK when Cheyne Horan shot these to prominence. His model was made "under license" - the pre shaping machine system of producing pro models in other countries - a way of paying the original designer a royalty to use a pro template after some instruction on how to shape it - although the effectiveness of attempting to teach the design subtleties to another shaper was questionable, particularly when it was rumoured that the licensee sometimes never actually received any instruction direct from the source! so how close to McCoy's the one I borrowed I don't know. I couldn't get it to work well but was excited enough about Cheyne Horan's surfing to make something similar for myself - I couldn't get this to work well either.
http://www.surfresearch.com.au/00000112.html
1981 - Anderson design and the arrival of the thruster - nose narrow relative to tail, wide point centre
http://www.surfresearch.com.au/00000095.html
1982 - Aloha - I once borrowed an Aloha with a similar look to this one - it was a good board
http://www.surfresearch.com.au/00000033.html
1982 - town and country - wide point 3" back
http://www.surfresearch.com.au/00000041.html
However some shapers took the no nose concept too far and the thruster design went backwards from the original Anderson concept. Certainly I borrowed a lot of UK built thrusters with exaggerated no nose concept and they were awful - no drive.
IMHO some famous shapers were guilty of regressing the thruster too
Schroff's blaster shape was sometimes made as a thruster, although I think it was probably better in its quirky quad form - the four fins added some drive to the UK made zappy quads I tried from that era. I only got to try a Blaster copy (thruster) so how similar it was I don't know, but an awful board - no drive.
I don't think the exaggerated no nose shape is suited to a standard thruster. I realise the McCoy nugget looks like it follows this model and I did more recently enjoy borrowing a modern tri-fin nugget and could get it to work well for me. But the nugget is not really a zap shape - its got a couple of compensators to make its super wide tail work well in thruster form - for a start the wide point is not back - its right in the centre, so the appearance is deceiving - at least on the one I measured (6' 1" surftech nugget). It also has exaggerated rolled V aka the "loaded dome". As far as I know the early zapped out thrusters didn't have these compensators.
There is way more to the Greg Pautch and Newport story. The kiddies today just assume some of this stuff has been around forever. Fact is so much happened from 78 until 93 in surfboards and brands it makes it seem really old, but the real meat of the thing only lasted around 12 years. I wrote way more than this on this article, but Pautschy wanted to keep it humble which is his way.
It’s like much of the stuff I have been writing here for a few years. There has always been an undercurrent which is the real story as opposed to the self serving hype seen on too many articles and videos. I read an interview on Michael Tompson where he called a famous surfer " insane " for experimenting on things he wanted to ride. What he was really saying is all this was costing him money and personal attention and cred among his other industry buds. Causing doubt about what was being written in the magazines for the kiddies his and other companies were preying on and they couldn’t have that.
That is the surfing industry most of the kids read about. Go to a trade show and see it all acted out for their benefit.
Its interesting to hear different peoples perspective on different shapes, and the lazer zap definitely seems to get alot of critics world over. It seems one of the main problems is that a board is designed in a local area for waves that are ridden by the designer regularly and they try to come up with a shape at suits those type of conditions, it gets ridden in those waves by a famous surfer who rides it well looks good suits the waves and the riders style, all is good. The zap was designed in east coast Aus were the waves a predominately peaky wind generated beach breaks, not a great deal of down the line stuff, its get in get what you can out of it and get out, before it closes out. That is what it does best short arcs and snaps on short waves, if you have long peeling waves, or waves with a long sloppy base, gutless waves or a cruiser style. Chances are the Lazer zap wont be the right board for you or that type of wave.
This year i got a couple of different boards from California and they were gorgeous but they felt like pigs in the surf to ride and then it really hit me that these boards were designed for there waves. I watched alot of different footage of people riding this type of equipment and started to understand the waves they were using them on and the style and how the approached the wave. After that i found waves that more resembled the californian conditions and the boards really came alive in these situations and even approaching the wave as i had seen and not my standard style of riding.
Basicly you have to think about your style of riding and the waves you ride before working out what will be best for you, if you like riding fishes for example the zap aint for you its at the other end of the short board scale. The new zaps are much easier to ride than the old single fins but still not for everyone which is how it has always been.
Really good post. My areas is shifty beach breaks as you describe which is exactly why I have always like Zaps and the like. When I lived in California I mostly just rode thrusters and some different style of McCoy singles without the extream back end. When I moved back to Florida the zappy boards came back. One of the fastest boards I ever rode in California or anywhere wouldn’t go vertical, but it was fun as hell was a Skip Frye. For small fun point breaks those things could cover some water area.
You hit the nail on the head also about why there is sometimes disappointment. It has to do with how things are being marketed. If they are being marketed as " the answer " without considering the type of wave they rarely will be. Once exception…bigger guys with intermediate to below talent level will almost always benefit from wider tails and more float.
Interesting to hear your comments on the Skip Frye board, one of the boards that i got was a Cooperfish speed hull, which i am sure would be totally suited to similar waves to the frye. The thing moves out off the bottom like the is no tomorrow, but direction changes are a trip and take a little calculation. Its an amazing boards but will definitely take some figuring out and a little style adaption, if i wanted to surf it with my regular approach i would have written it off, but if you approach it as something new and understand what type of waves it was designed for and the type of riding it likes, it can be up lifting like most boards.
Thrusters basicly made surfing mush easier with there stabile user friendly manouverability, alot of finnesse was removed and body dynamics, You could get to your feet and just start throwing the thing around, and the board would respond, with little thought of style or even making the wave from start to finish, dont look down the line just do another re entry. With this mentality it is difficult to evaluate a board design that is following a different path by a designer with a different mindset, where big moves are not of the upmost importance, but connecting the dots and pulling off clean at waves end.
Sorry for the rambling but alot of writers of surf magazines generally are not qualified to evalute a boards performance properly and have little interest, if they ride something and there mates say your surfing crap most would rather keep ego intact, than persist to see if there is something to be learnt, about board or personal technique.
Writers and Editors of surf Publications are not paid to evaluate boards.
To do a true evaluation would be similar to how skis are evaluated, the idea is to take as much of the subjective as possible out of the equation to have a mix of pro and vary good little known surfers ride 5 to 10 different boards in the same conditions All Boards would be painted so that you would have a hard time identifying who made what board.
Boards would be scored in different categories. drive, speed, turn, hold and so on. Each surfer would also write a short statement of their over all impression of the board.
Here is how it would work.
Surfer: joe Kool regular foot , power surfer.
Board: Quad fish, Board size range range 5'5" to 6"
Conditions: peaky A frame strong beach break both left and rights. 4 to 6 foot slight chop some tubes.
Board 1A 5'6"
score 1 to 10
Speed 8, drive 9, turn backside 4 , turn front side 8, Holding 9 Over all 38
Surfer Joe, impressions;" I'm not that impressed, good board but no real thrill good but lacks something."
Artz, the sort of board test system you described worked well in the sailboard test articles that I used to read in sailboard magazines in the late 80s. They might still do it now, but I don't sailboard any more.
They had several testers rate several boards on a number of criteria and gave a rating say out 5 for each and presented the results in a chart form. I bought 2 boards based on such reviews and also borrowed another board whose review I had read. I could certainly relate to the reviews and felt satisfied they had done a good job of describing the boards
The other thing to consider is most surfers already have preconcieved notion of what they think works and how they think they surf. No test could possibly be truely fair because no two surfers surf alike or are looking for the same feeling. I love the feeling of singles, but when I see vids of me surfing on thrusters I look like I am looser. I find thruster surfing very predictable and boring for the most part, but there are times, I tire of working at the other stuff and just want to go out and surf and thrusters do that very well.
What I like about a guy like Greg Pautsch is he is equally good if not one of the best at doing what some would call retro boards while being one of the best shortboard shapers I have seen. A complete shaper. One that can give a surfer whatever they would like. There are many others like him talent wise, but GP has his own style and lines.
The difference between craftsmen is what makes surfing interesting. Who get’s excited about comparing an EP Ski with an O’brien?
Great article Solo.
As you know I have my Greg Pautsch now (got it last week) and I couldn't be happier. I will get some photo's up soon . You were great to deal with and I thank you for that. GP sure makes a beautiful board and it really looks good under the Australian sun !
Thanks Mono. GP will be relieved to know you like you board. Shipping them that far is always sketchy. As you know. Gives us an entirely different perspective on government. I’m lucky, I have really good customers. Most end up becoming new friends. It’s one of the really unique things about the good side of the surf industry. Look forward to shots of you and your board and hopefully surfing it. Tell the boys down there hello from Dixie.
Early newport?
…ambrose…
where’s G.Tarzan Smith>
Tom Zahn>quigg> russell>
in this earlyness?
Invisible behind the polka dot curtain?
…ambrose…
it’s like talkin’ “Oakland”
and not mentioning
the tube to Alameda.
This is specifially about Pautsch and McCoy and it’s relationship and movement. Those others are all valid. I plan on writing about as many of them as I can get factual information from. I lived out there during this time. The Quik McCoy thing was huge. I also liked Hurley Twins and my first thruster was an infinity bought from the old ghetto.
Wednesday was confronting i had a great session on my Lazor Zap in a clean hollow beachbreak nearby. I came home and made a cup of tea and turned on the computer and had a look at some posts on Surfer magazine, and Rob Gilley (photographer) had an article in there I read, and his opinion was that the Lazor Zap was the worst surfboard design in history. I kept drinking my tea and smiled to myself, wondering if the surf i just had was an illusion,or was I just a fool for riding such a board.
So there you have it a senior lens man or the biggest mag in the world tells me i am riding junk, thats cool, i will do it again tomorrow.